For the newly inaugurated IU Student Association executives, the time to start is now, not September.\nDespite an extra month of elections, President Luke Fields and the rest of the IUSA executives are ready to sink their teeth into the upcoming year.\n“We’re just going to do it,” Fields said. “We’re going to move forward; we finally get to go.”\nFollowing more than a month of appeals and hearings over IUSA elections code violations, the Big Red ticket was inaugurated April 28. Despite the controversy, for Fields it was never about winning the elections; it was about defending the rights of students.\n“All of us were very committed – we’re making certain we exhausted our resources to make certain that we gave justice the best chance to happen,” Fields said. “The bottom line that I want everybody to recognize from our commitment is that it isn’t that we’re whiny or sore losers ... What I think is true is that everyone on campus has recognized, or should recognize, that this is a group of executives specifically and a ticket-wide group of individuals that is committed to doing what’s right no matter the cost.”\nThe executives have already hit the ground running by starting to accomplish their platform goals of 100 percent meal-point rollover, health care on weekends, tax-free textbooks and a student section in Assembly Hall – all while trying to restore the organization’s legitimacy. Although restoring legitimacy will be no easy task, Fields said he believes the best way is just to get to work.\n“The best way for IUSA to become legitimate is to be legitimate – by going out and fighting for the things we told students we wanted to fight for,” he said.
Goals\nDespite a drawn-out election process, the executives have already started achieving their platform goals.\nAfter being inaugurated, the executives immediately began getting on the calendars of as many administrators as they could.\nFields said they wanted the administrators to hear some of their goals and thoughts and see how, as a ticket, they can see these goals come to fruition.\n“We can do our part,” he said. “We’ve got to get them to do theirs.”\nFields said their most ambitious goal is a student section for Assembly Hall. Fields hopes that, because new IU basketball coach Tom Crean is equally committed and is in a similar situation to IUSA, Crean will be a big advocate of the student section. \nWith regard to 100 percent meal-point rollover, Fields said they have already set the \nball rolling.\nVice President Dan Sloat explained that, in the past, only a certain percentage of meal points rolled over from the summer to the fall semester. Students who have meal points now and will be coming back in the fall will retain 100 percent of their meal points, with a set period of time in the fall semester to use them. Although that’s not exactly 100 percent meal-point rollover, Sloat said, they are definitely making improvements.\nEven though providing weekend health care to students is still in the research phase, Treasurer Robin Featherston said in order to make it feasible, the executives need to sit down with administrators and weigh the issues, such as a potential impact on student health fees and whether or not students are willing to pay for it.\n“We’re committed to finding some way that students on campus who don’t have cars can have access to medical facilities when they get injured on the weekends,” she said.\nSeveral ideas thought up by the executives included providing an ambulatory service to bring students to PromptCare on the weekends.\nFields said the executives need to figure out whether most injuries on the weekend are sports-related. If so, injured students might be able to receive health care in the School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation or the Student Recreational Sports Center.\nAlready in touch with representatives in the Indiana Congress, Fields said in order to get the ball rolling with tax-free textbooks, IUSA needs to get other large universities in the state behind the legislation as well as the rest of the IU campuses. Fields said the executives will be meeting with other universities’ student governments to help push the legislation.\n“Tax-free textbooks is not going to come out of Bloomington,” he said, adding that it’s a good start, but there needs to be a statewide push for it.
Student apathy\nWith about 35,000 students on campus and only 7,834 voting in the IUSA elections this past year, Fields and the rest of his staff are fighting to combat student apathy.\n“Student apathy stems from just this overwhelming sense of (students asking), ‘How can I even communicate myself to those people if I wanted to?’” Fields said. “It’s tough to get me to even go to the office if I got a lot going on and it’s my office.”\nFields hopes to reach out to students through a variety of means. Fields said the ticket has been intrigued with some of the new ways Facebook and OnCourse can be put to work – something he hopes will help reach students.\nAnother idea the ticket threw around was holding a “town meeting,” something they bill as simple as “just come \nand complain.”\n“Students love to complain,” Fields said. “I love to complain. But what’s tough is complaining when you feel like no one is listening.”\nFeatherston said she believes a contributing factor to student apathy is empty promises. She said tickets are elected into office on wonderful platforms that sound like they’re going to change the University, but that rarely happens. To her, she said, it seems as if there are two segments of students – students who are excited, and students who think the current executives aren’t going to do anything.\n“The best way to combat that is to prove them wrong,” she said. “We tried to keep a critical eye to our platform to make sure we really felt like we had some achievable things to really get done...so that the next administration can finish it up for us.”
