IUSA collaborates, exchanges ideas with other Big 10 schools at conference

Different ways to hold elections and take tests are among the issues IU Student Association President Luke Fields and Vice President Dan Sloat explored at the Association of Big 10 Students conference last weekend, hosted at the University of Illinois.

“It was a great opportunity to collaborate with all Big 10 schools,” Fields said.

The conference was a brainstorming system in which student leaders discussed similar issues each school faced and how they should deal with these issues, Fields and Sloat said.

Student leaders shared various project ideas their schools are currently tackling, and other schools may implement these ideas at their own schools, Sloat said.

Fields and Sloat shared IU’s long history of student affairs and student legal services with the fellow student representatives at the conference.

They also had the opportunity to listen and learn about other schools’ undertakings.  
The University of Illinois uses “clickers” – similar to those used in large lecture classes to take attendance –  for voting. IUSA needs to find room in their budget to implement such a voting system, Sloat said.

“It adds to the legitimacy of the votes, and it will prevent getting grief from other congress members,” he said.

IUSA received another project idea from the University of Iowa during the conference. Iowa has a program with Kaplan to host the LSAT and GRE testing on campus. This system works to both the students’ and Kaplan’s advantage, they said. 

“Students save money because Kaplan saves money by utilizing free university classrooms,” Sloat said.