SerVaas races based on experience

Peter SerVaas wants to finish what he started.

After almost a year as IU Student Association President, the junior from Indianapolis is running for a second term, this time as the candidate for Vice President for Administration on the iUnity ticket.

SerVaas served as class president during his senior year at Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School. He was also actively involved in speech and debate, which he says allowed him to make personal connections before he even set foot on campus.

It was through those connections that SerVaas became involved in IUSA during his freshman year and served as Director of Student Services under the Big Red administration.

“You were really able to find issues or problems and work on those, whether they were projects on how to change things or there was a huge tragedy and concerns on campus, and you were able to go meet with administrators and make sure that the students opinion was heard,”  SerVaas said.

As a sophomore, he constructed a ticket on which he ran as candidate for President. That ticket, known as Btown, won the 2009 IUSA election.

Senior Jack McCarthy serves as Vice President for Administration on the Btown ticket and said SerVaas has a desire to connect people.

“Peter has a great ability to create connections on campus with students and administrators,” McCarthy said.

SerVaas said his decision to run for another term comes from the relationships he has built as president and a desire to finish work on the initiatives he set out to accomplish on the Btown ticket, some of which he said he hopes will be completed in the next several months.

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So with one foot in the current administration and another in the race for the next, the question remains: Why should students give SerVaas a second chance?

SerVaas said the answers to questions about the future should come from a look into the past. He has met as many as 10 past IUSA presidents and heard them describe a cycle of productivity and non-productivity that varies from year to year. He said this happens because there is no tie between each administration.

“I think there has to be continuity,” SerVaas said. “Students don’t realize that these changes don’t occur over night, and it’s obvious that in an election you want ideas that are popular among students, so these are going to be large-scale issues.”

Walking this line between big promises and big results has led to problems for some administrations, SerVaas said.

“The only president that ran twice, served twice, really should be credited with accomplishing buses on campus, but it took three or four years to get through the initial stages, to get free buses,” SerVaas said.

SerVaas said discussing IUSA with David Orensten, the two-term president responsible for the bus initiative, provided him with inspiration and motivation to continue to tackle his unfinished business.

Opponents offer a different view. Sophomore Justin Kingsolver, Kirkwood ticket’s candidate for president, said SerVaas has had a chance to accomplish his goals and hasn’t made tangible progress.

“He had a great set of ideas to run off of last time, and the campus agreed by voting for them that those were important,” Kingsolver said. “None of those five issues have been resolved yet.”

SerVaas’s Btown Ticket ran on a platform that supported five issues: cross campus bike rental, tax-free textbooks, GPS tracking on buses, fall break and gym camera installation. SerVaas said he is willing to accept defeat on the issue of tax-free textbooks.

Due to the economic climate, he said, that initiative has been unsuccessful. However, SerVaas said  he has seen success.

“Some of these common issues that have been themes of past IUSA elections hadn’t really seen any improvement, but finally this year we made major leaps in terms of getting to these points,” SerVaas said.

SerVaas said this progress can be attributed to internal restructuring. Instead of having each executive tackle one or more of the platform issues, the Btown administration developed a structure of task forces, with one chief and multiple people on teams devoted to a single initiative.

“Now we have a group of students who are working on it, it’s their entire job for the entire year to make headway,” SerVaas said.

In contrast, Kingsolver said this restructuring was actually a weakness. In his time as Speaker of the House in Congress, Kingsolver said he became frustrated with a “parade of directors” who came before congress to debate issues. Kingsolver said a single appearance by SerVaas would have been far more effective.

Kingsolver said the lack of a centralized government hurt Btown’s efforts to make change.

“I think that’s why a lot of the issues they cared so much about did not come to fruition,” Kingsolver said. He added that the Kirkwood ticket would attempt to create a more centralized structure, in which the President and Vice President for Administration would serve as speakers for the student body. The task force would function as advisors and researchers, gathering facts that would help the two executive make decisions before going before faculty or administrators.

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If SerVaas is elected to another term, he’ll have the opportunity to continue to work on three Btown initiatives also carried on iUnity’s platform. IBreak is accompanied by iBike and iBus, which expand on Btown’s bike rental and GPS bus tracking programs.

SerVaas said the strength of the iUnity ticket comes from their experience. Candidate for Treasurer and sophomore Sierra Hsieh and iUnity’s Chief of Staff and sophomore Neil Kelty are both current members of IUSA’s executive staff.

Along with SerVaas and other staff members, they would be the bridge between the iUnity and the Btown administration.

SerVaas said the Vice Presidential position would allow him to focus specifically on initiatives, rather than just representing the student body.

He also said he was comfortable passing his role on to Coleman.

“Mike is a very strong candidate,”  SerVaas said.

Kingsolver said SerVaas’s experience might be an advantage, although the Kirkwood ticket has been working hard to build new relationships with administrators as well.

“The only thing I think it means is he has more experience meeting with administrators,” Kingsolver said.

However, SerVaas said the ticket’s experience will ease the transition from this administration to the next.

“I believe we’re gonna have more success continuing these topics,” he said.