IU Wiki idea wins funds from IUSA case competition

A case competition sponsored by the IU Student Association and Global Sales Leadership Society on Friday produced a new Wiki information project to be funded through IUSA.

The winning idea came from one of eight competing presentations. The panel of judges included Assistant Dean of Students and Director of Student Activities Steve Veldkamp, IUSA members Sean Damer and Eric Slivka, and GSLS members Lori Bellino and Stephanie Steidle.

Slivka said the case competition was a great attempt to harness the brainpower of a large school such as IU.

“From 40,000 students we could probably figure out — not all the world’s problems — but we could figure out a lot,” Slivka said.

The winning team’s Wiki idea would allow students to edit and receive information via the Internet, similar to the Web site Wikipedia. This would include information about classes and student groups and would help foster communication between groups, Slivka said.

The idea will receive $2,500 of IUSA funds and will be implemented by the team and the current administration.

“The team that won, we decided because their idea was extremely relevant,” Slivka said. “It was a creative idea that we didn’t necessarily think of ourselves.”

The winning team was made up of senior Bryan Stephens, juniors Rachel Eldert and Austin Piech and sophomores Chris Ebling and Greg Myers.

Slivka also said that while the winning team’s idea was most feasible based on time constraints and the size of the case, the first and second runners up presented interesting ideas as well.

A team from Coal Free IU won second place in the competition.

“The idea, primarily, is to use our experience, knowledge and manpower to team up with the IUSA and their connections and funds to pressure the administration to transition away from coal power,” said sophomore Hannah Hunt, director of media for Coal Free IU.

The team hoped its idea would combine with IUSA to improve the community as a whole.

“If IU did switch to alternative energy, it would have a large
impact,” said freshman Nick McKay, director of research for Coal Free IU.

Slivka said while this idea would be beneficial to the IU community, it was ultimately “a larger-scale plan than we can fix.”

In third place was a team pushing for IU to improve its student section at games. The team’s plan would focus on non-guaranteed student seats and would revoke seats from students who didn’t show up to games or behave poorly before or during games, Slivka said.