With members coming from current and previous IU Student Association experiences, REAL for IUSA’s ticket has focused its campaign on building off the momentum of the current administration.
Junior Sara Zaheer, REAL president, said the student body is in a transformative place where students are speaking up and want more say in what gets done in student government.
REAL’s team includes junior Alex Trevino, vice president of administration, junior Tyler Knox, vice president of congress, and sophomore Patrick Kennedy, treasurer.
REAL stands for Representative Experienced Active Leadership.
Policies
REAL has four main initiatives: Inclusive Hoosier Experience, Health and Safety, Sustainability, and Student Voice.
Under Inclusive Hoosier Experience, REAL wants to create a more diverse and inclusive environment on campus.
REAL plans to improve incident reporting and emphasize this in course syllabi. They also want to improve disability services and the accessibility of campus buildings and to create more effective academic advising resources.
“We want everyone to feel like campus is accessible, affordable and inclusive,” Zaheer said.
Kennedy has taken charge of working to improve the IU Mobile App.
“I think it’s something that, if done right, could be a really useful tool to students on campus,” Kennedy said.
In terms of sustainability, REAL has plans to make more off-campus recycling as well as improve current recycling in academic buildings. They also hope to put in more motion-sensor lighting and have more double-sided printing in printers on campus.
Knox, who is pursuing a minor in sustainability, said this initiative is his favorite.
“Whenever I’m walking on campus, there are always these little issues that I see and I’m just like, ‘Let’s fix that. It’s not that difficult to fix,’” Knox said.
To improve health and safety, REAL plans to build off of what is already being talked about on campus.
Some of REAL’s policies for this include revamping IU Safety Escort, continuing to work for more lighting in Dunn Woods and off-campus neighborhoods, having more in-house counselors in academic and cultural centers and working to improve or replace IU Notify.
“I just really want everybody to be safe,” Miko Siewenie, REAL’s campaign manager, said. “People are worried about going to class at 6 p.m., and that’s heartbreaking to me.”
Another initiative REAL wants to implement came from talks with other Big Ten student governments. Other schools take revenue from alcohol sales at sporting events and give a portion of it to a public health program such as preventing binge drinking.
Zaheer said if REAL were to implement a program like that at IU, it would want to give a portion of the revenue to mental health programs.
“That’s such a need and that’s something we want every student to be able to have the resources and support to do well academically,” Zaheer said.
For the student voice initiative, REAL works off the phrase “If you pay, you have a say.”
One way to increase student voice and transparency is by better communicating how student fees are being used.
A big goal under student voice is increasing the communication and collaboration among different governing organizations on campus.
Siewenie said many powerful student organizations have the same ideals and goals, but they don’t often unite and work toward the same goal.
REAL wants IUSA to work with other organizations and put their funding and their ideas together.
There’s a lot of overlapping in programming among students, student groups and administration, Siewenie said.
“They’re going toward the same ideas, but you can’t really bring a lot of people and unify them if there are so many different things happening at the same time and so many people are getting different information,” Siewenie said.
On a larger scale, REAL plans to create an avenue where students can share their opinions and be heard by the University when they are looking to support or oppose certain state legislation.
Zaheer said it would be nice to have a place for students to share their opinions on certain topics instead of just talking about it amongst themselves.
Next Steps
As it prepares for the election in April, REAL will continue to reach out to students across campus to hear its ideas. By using the resources each member has, it will also make a plan for how to get its initiatives done.
Zaheer said REAL is the ticket that will use the many resources it has to accomplish its goals. For each policy goal, they have a plan on whom to talk to, what they next steps are and how to get it done.
“We are actually putting in the initiative and the work and the passion to get them done,” Trevino said.
