IUSA is turning around, but some initiatives will be difficult to enact

Far too many students only think of broken promises, bloated budgets and election controversies when they think of the IU Student Association, if they think of anything at all.

Last year remains a low point in IUSA’s history. The administration went over budget and got little done. The year ended in accusations and counter-accusations of election code violations that ultimately resulted in Kirkwood, the ticket that was originally declared the winner, being tossed out by the IU Supreme Court in favor of Big Red.

For many students, IUSA is just kind of there, but we should be aware of what the organization does and what it is trying to do. This year it commands a budget of $82,800 – not a small amount by any measure. Even if you believe the $1.20 taken from each student isn’t too much for you, personally, it is hard to deny that the sum of the money could go toward plenty of other uses.

So far this year’s administration seems to have a decent chance of staying on budget. Hopefully it won’t have to tolerate meetings in which the Student Body Congress can’t meet quorum.

IUSA President Luke Fields and IUSA Vice President Dan Sloat have tried to restore confidence in student government, and so far they haven’t done a bad job.

Fields and Sloat have put five issues on the top of their agenda for this year: 100 percent meal point rollover, tax-free textbooks, a fall break, a student section for basketball and weekend health center coverage.

Enjoying the fine cuisine of RPS a little longer
It only took the IUSA three weeks to deliver on its promise of 100 percent meal point rollover, or at least, something much closer to it.

Sloat had been working with the Residential Programs and Services meal plan committee since the fall of 2006, devising a comprehensive solution to getting more points to rollover and make purchasing plans more affordable.

Unfortunately, rollover in this context only means rollover for one semester. In other words, all the meal points you still have left from the spring 2009 semester will be good for the fall 2009 semester, but after that they will start to continuously lose value again.

Fields told me he wanted to extend the rollover for a whole year. Getting rollover for the entire duration a student attends IU sounds like the ideal situation.

Then there is the new I-BUCK meal point system, one I-BUCK equals $1. But using I-BUCKs gets you a discount on your purchases, depending on how big your plan is. That sounds great, but depending on the plan, one I-BUCK actually costs more than $1. Though, in the long run, you do seem to save money by buying more I-BUCKs.

The plan isn’t complicated to confuse you, although it seems to have that effect. Efforts by IUSA to make the system a little more straight-forward would be applauded.

Tax-free textbooks
By the end of the week most IUSA executives will be meeting with state Senator Vi Simpson to discuss a proposal to institute a “tax-free weekend” in Indiana.

The logic of the proposal: Students often fork more than hundreds of dollars for textbooks each semester when ideally getting the materials you need for class shouldn’t be such a barrier to success.

In fact, it is often in the interest of governments to encourage participation in higher education, and the price for this education is usually higher than the social optimal. Making something tax-free is just like subsidizing it, and a subsidy on textbooks would encourage their consumption.

The proposal IUSA plans to submit to Simpson this Friday would cover more than just textbooks. It calls for items “sold between 12:01 a.m. on the last Friday of August and 11:59 p.m. the following Sunday and sold between 12:01 am on the first Friday of January and 11:59p.m. the following Sunday” to be “exempt from the sales tax.”

The proposal includes computers, clothing and other school supplies within a certain price range, as well as textbooks.

The road to achieving such a proposal could be an uphill one, but Fields assured me other IU campuses were workingto make it happen and that the idea has had some success elsewhere in the country. Too bad most students will still be better off fishing for used books on Amazon.
 
A dream deferred
To burrow from the late great Langston Hughes, “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? ... Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?”

When it comes to the dream of an IU student section in Assembly Hall, it is definitely the latter.

IU administrators frequently cite the tendency of students to barge disruptively into Assembly Hall late for the game (and often a little intoxicated) as reason why more effort hasn’t been made to secure a student section.

IUSA seems willing to hear out this grievance and is trying to find ways to entice IU students to attend more games on time.

Fields said IUSA is working with the athletics department to sponsor a Crimson Rewards Program. The program would provide students with points for attendance at most IU sporting events. These points could in turn be used to get better
quality seats for future games.

It remains to be seen whether any of these schemes will actually get students to the game on time, just as it remains to be seen whether this could provide a transition to a real student section.

Nearly every IUSA ticket has put the promise of a student section in its platform. The greatest hope for this administration to achieve it could come from IU basketball coach Tom Crean, whom Fields said he hopes to meet with and make his biggest ally on this issue.

sh: Taking a little break

When I began my freshman year here I assumed that, like just about every other college student in the country, I would be getting Labor Day off. IU has long refused to grant its students that one day off.

The fact they we had Labor Day off this year could pave the way for more ambitious schedule changes, but I can’t be the only one skeptical about a fall break.

Fields assured me it could happen. So far, IUSA has made student appointments to the calendar committee and is working with IU Provost Karen Hanson to make this happen.

It is easy to see the benefit of a fall break. Right now we go nearly 13 weeks from the start of the year until we finally get a break for Thanksgiving. That kind of stress doesn’t exactly translate into excellent academic performance.

sh: A better health center

By far the most ambitious item on IUSA’s agenda is getting IU Health Center coverage on weekends. Fields called this his “biggest issue” and said IUSA holds “all the pieces to make it happen.”

The biggest piece will be the ability of the IU student administration to recommend a higher health center student fee.

People get sick on weekends as much as any other day of the week. Indeed, given the lifestyle of plenty of college students, we probably get our fair share of ailments then.

And even if you do get sick during the weekend, it is sometimes difficult to block off an hour in your day for a visit when the place stops taking walk-ins at 4:30 p.m. For the student who wants to exercise preventative care without skipping a few classes, weekend health center hours would be ideal.

Of course the issue involves whether or not we will consider weekend health center service worth the extra cost because that cost could certainly prove high.
IUSA must work with Health Center Director Hugh Jessup and, most importantly, students to make this a reality.

Students tend to flaunt any increase in their student fee’s, and given the high cost of tuition these days, any increase in the cost must come for a good cause. This is such a cause.

sh: Taking Care of Business  

IUSA will have plenty of other responsibilities this year. Soon it will convene a group of students to set all mandatory student fees and could play a pivotal role in finding a replacement for Dean of Students Dick McKaig, who will be retiring at the end of the year.

IUSA’s initiatives could go a long way in helping us forget the days when we didn’t know what the organization was.

One-hundred percent meal point rollover is a major accomplishment, and tax-free textbooks are worth pursuing. A basketball student section and fall break are probably long-shots. It is the initiative for weekend health center coverage that seems most significant.

Let’s hope this year’s IUSA follows through and at least lays the ground work for making that a reality.