Refound IUSA

This week marked the start of one of my favorite parts of spring semester: IUSA elections.

It’s not that I enjoy them, or even that I usually vote in them, but they provide an almost limitless supply of entertainment. What will kids who desire a title do to convince the rest of us to care?

Last year we got a kid dressed up like a leprechaun with a megaphone outside of Ballantine.

I can only hope that Btown United is going to have a gang of soccer hooligans roaming the streets on Election Day.

I jest, but in my mind, IUSA is about giving the student body an advocate, a lobby if you will, and we haven’t really been getting that from our elected leaders.

Our student government could take a stance in support of political issues related to students: Where was IUSA during the satellite voting fiasco? Isn’t it in the student body’s best interest to have voting available on campus?

This is what I want to see: No more student body president-led executive branch and a real attempt at lobbying for students.

Barrett Tenbarge was able to travel to D.C. and lobby to get a presidential debate at IU. 

Would it have been to much to ask him to say “IU students really support student loan reform” or “Thanks for letting us stay on our parents’ health care until we’re 26”?

While controversial, these laws were made with students in mind and IUSA should be at least talking about legal matters that directly affect its constituents.

As for getting rid of student body president, it’s just outdated.

This year has been a bad example of the kind of strive that can emerge between the executive branch and its sister branches.

What good did the student body gain from the power struggle over who could be an IUSA supreme court justice?

We should trash the current system, which wouldn’t be hard since the IUSA bylaws and constitution are vague and unclear, and make a new IUSA that does nothing but push for student advocacy and innovation.


E-mail: thommill@indiana.edu