With initiatives ranging from enhancing student well-being to increasing diversity and inclusion, Accelerate IUSA prepares for upcoming elections by focusing on the people of IU-Bloomington.
“What we’re really trying to do with Accelerate is really transform the way that the student government has been done in the past in terms of student voice,” said junior Connor Brashear, Accelerate president.
Accelerate’s ticket also includes junior Neil Dav, vice president of administration; Jack
After announcing its ticket last week, Accelerate IUSA received more than 100 applications to join its team, something the executive ticket had never seen before, Brashear said
“We’ve tried to approach this in a way that’s very flat in terms of leadership structure and making sure that everyone on our team has that feeling of a very important voice within Accelerate,” Brashear said.
He said Accelerate wants to focus on everyone on campus regardless of backgrounds or cultures.
“It really, for Accelerate, comes back to the people, and I think that’s extremely critical,” Snider said.
Policies
Accelerate’s four main initiatives are safety and well-being, sustainability, student empowerment and student affordability
Running as the vice president of administration, Davé focused mainly on creating these policies. Davé said one of the important ways these policies were developed was by bringing the entire Accelerate team together.
“We were trying to bring in a representation and a body of students on our platform to come together collectively and identify the key issues that every student is facing day in and day out on campus,” Davé said.
To increase campus safety, Accelerate plans to increase lighting both on and off campus, specifically the Crescent area and off-campus areas which are heavily populated by IU students.
Accelerate also wants to improve the relationship students have with the IU Police Department. This will be accomplished by bringing IUPD representatives to New Student Orientation to establish a relationship with freshmen right away.
Within its campus safety initiative, Accelerate also focuses on student well-being and health. Accelerate plans to work with IU’s Counseling and Psychological Services to make it more accessible for students to receive mental health treatment
Making IU a greener and more sustainable campus is another goal of Accelerate, Davé said.
One of the ways to increase sustainability is by enhancing transparency when it comes to energy usage and related issues. Davé said they hope to adopt models, such as live displays of energy usage of on-campus
The student empowerment initiative focuses on diversity and the minority interest.One part of this initiative is promoting the Culture of Care IU already has in place
“I think it’s one of the greatest initiatives at IU to essentially show the student body that we take a fundamental interest in ensuring that everybody feels as though they are wanted and cared for at IU,” Davé said.
Accelerate wants to create a “Week of Culture” and a new website, diversity.iu.edu, to get feedback from students
Accelerate is currently reaching out to more than 50 international organization to foster relationships and hear their thoughts on the diversity policies, He, a sophomore, said.
During the proposed “Week of Culture,” Accelerate also plans to foster more social interaction between international and domestic students.
Davé said one of the most important initiatives is student affordability because it affects every student on campus. Starting with textbook costs, Davé said Accelerate hopes to make more online textbooks available as well as helping students’ accessibility to groceries and cheaper forms of learning.
“Something I’m very passionate about is ensuring that everybody on the University campus has the access to opportunity here at IU,” Davé said
Brashear said Accelerate knows its goals are ambitious and many people will question how it plans to implement them.
“I think that the main strategy is just putting the right people for the right job in there,” Brashear said.
Next Steps
Looking forward, Accelerate’s next goals will focus on fleshing out policies, refining who takes what positions and increasing outreach on campus.
“I think it’s just about stepping back again and reflecting on ‘Is this exactly what the University wants? Is this representative of the broader IU-Bloomington?’” Brashear said.
Snider said one of his goals is making sure the voters are educated on what affects them most.
“It’s important that students really care about the things that are affecting them and elect the team of students that will be passionate and proactive in making those changes,” he added.
Davé’s said his hope for Accelerate is for it to breathe life back into student government and engage the general student body by making them more aware of student government.
“I think that it’s really the medium and the way that we can facilitate long-standing and long-acting beneficial change on campus,” Davé said.
