Hello Panthers! My name is Eric Boisen and I am the current Speaker of the Senate for NISG. We are in the midst of the NISG elections right now, so I thought this would be a good time to tell you all the other items that will be on the ballot when you vote. 

Besides the president and VP, you will also be voting for the senators for your college. Each college has a certain number of senators depending on how many students are in your college. Example: for the College of Business, there are 3 senators, but for the College of Humanities Arts and Sciences there are six. Corey Cooling put up a list of who will be on the ballot. There are many uncontested seats, so I would urge you to write in someone you think would be a good candidate!

Besides the people you will be voting on, you will be voting on three ballot initiatives. One ballot initiative is for “SSB 2014-76.” This updates the NISG constitution. In 2011, the makeup of the NISG senate changed, but the constitution was not updated to go along with those changes. This would finally update the constitution after four years. You can read the changes in its entirety, at bit.ly/SSB201476 (all changes are highlighted in yellow or crossed out). For the most part, these are basic changes that will not change anything substantial within NISG. 

 The second ballot initiative is for “SSB 2014-77.” This changes the NISG constitution to allow for at-large senate seats within the senate. To give some background, NISG has always had a problem with filing empty senate seats. As speaker, I had the first full senate in over 5 years, but that only lasted less than two months. This change will allow for one senate seat per college, that has been unfilled for over six continuous weeks, to become an “at-large seat.” This means anyone call fill that position regardless of college. 

This change is not permanent; at the end of each term, the at-large seats will turn back into seats for a specific college. Students will not be able to run as an at-large senator, and the speaker will still try to make an honest effort to fill empty seats before they turn into at-large seats. This will hopefully solve the problem of having too many empty seats each year. You can read the entire proposal at: bit.ly/SSB201477.

The last item that will be on the ballot will deal with the College Readership Program.  The CRP is the program that puts the New York Times, USA Today, and Des Moines Register in the Union for students to take and read. The cost of the CRP is roughly $1 per student each year. NISG currently has that cost in its yearly budget, and that takes a fair chunk of our budget. 

The proposal on the ballot will be asking if students would like $1 of their yearly fees to go towards the CRP. If students vote for this, then an extra dollar will be put in the student services fee to pay for the CRP. If students reject this, chances are the CRP will not exist into next year. 

There are two reasons for this. 1) The CRP costs a fair amount and NISG is paying that, making our funds unavailable for many other projects that we would like to host, or for student organizations to put on events. We have tried to get other departments at UNI to help fund the program, but to no avail. 2) Many professors, not students, are taking these papers. This is taking money from the CRP (that is paid for by students) and leaving less papers for students to use. Because of this, the CRP may not be around next year if students don’t vote for this ballot initiative. That does not mean I am arguing for you to vote for the CRP, that is up for you to decide. 

With everything on the ballot this election, brush up on what you will be voting on, it will take just a few minutes of your time. If you have any questions, please email me at [email protected]. 

Go Panthers!