5 groups back Hoosier party

Leaders of several student groups announced their support for IU Student Association ticket Hoosier on \nMonday.\nThe executive boards of the College Democrats, the College Republicans, IU Dance Marathon, the Interfraternity Council and the Student Athletic Board have agreed to back Hoosier in the IUSA election. The Council for Advancing Student Leadership executives voted to support Hoosier but withdrew that support after realizing that CASL's charter prevents it from backing a single party.\nThe presidents of Mortar Board, a college honor society, and Kelley Student Government, a group representing undergraduates to the Kelley School of Business, also said they personally back Betsy Henke's Hoosier campaign. They acknowledged, however, that their views do not necessarily represent their organizations as a whole.\nThe announcements come as digital polls for the IUSA elections open today. Students can vote from 10 a.m. today until 10 p.m. Wednesday at www.indiana.edu/~iusa.\nHoosier executives hope the support will help swing more votes in favor of their party. On Sunday, five student groups that work to stop sexual assault agreed to back Red Hot following a debate about sexual assault awareness and prevention.\n"If it's about showing endorsements, we're happy to show them because we've got some pretty big swingers behind our ticket," said Hoosier Vice President for Administration candidate and junior Andrew Lauck.\nIUDM President and senior Josh Wendahl said his groups support Hoosier in large part because Hoosier presidential candidate Henke worked hard to get IUDM funding in her position as leader of IUSA's Assisted Interorganizational Development program.\n"The way they worked with us has been very positive for us and we're very interested in doing that again," Wendahl said.\nBut Red Hot presidential candidate and junior Lenny Weiss said IUDM's support for Hoosier on those grounds was dubious.\n"That sounds like a bribe to me," he said. "Every IUSA administration has a chance to support Dance Marathon and there is no way that we wouldn't support this organization as much as Hoosier."\nHenke called Weiss' comments "completely inaccurate." IUSA executives have no say in funding for IUDM, she said.\nWendahl, Student Athletics Board President and junior Ryan Nietert and IFC President and senior Justin Sloan said the opposing Red Hot ticket has made no attempt to contact them, while Hoosier candidates met with executives from the groups and even came to meetings. \nIFC executives decided to fully back Hoosier after Red Hot treasurer candidate and junior Scott Ottenheimer told the Indiana Daily Student on Monday that his party would not support IFC's "Bring Your Own Beverage" policy, Sloan said. \n"That proved to us that the Hoosier ticket was willing to do the prior research instead of bashing a current program we are endorsing without even contacting us," he said.\nRed Hot does not fully support the "bring your own beer" policy because the party believes allowing students age 21 and older to bring alcohol into fraternities would make greek life less safe and would remove University protection of fraternities.\nCollege Democrats President and junior Emma Cullen and College Republicans Chairman and junior Shane Kennedy said their groups both voted to support Hoosier late Monday night, but would not disclose the number of votes each party received.