Joanna Orban
Staff Writer
The Associated Students of Idaho State University (ASISU) currently has positions in both the legislative and the executive branches available for this election season. There are 17 positions available consisting of President, Vice President, Outreach Campus Vice President, and various senator positions.
This year ISU reached the required number of students on the Idaho Falls and Meridian campuses to have a new position, Outreach Campus Vice President, for overseeing those student’s needs. According to the ASISU Elections, no one is running for the new post so far.
On the Pocatello campus, Samantha Winslow and Aayush Jha are both running for positions with the party ISU4U. Winslow is running as Senator for the College of Arts and Letters while Jha is running for ASISU President.
The ISU4U party’s campaign slogan is “strengthening the Bengal family.” To do this, the party members created five points that encompass their campaign and what they would like to accomplish should they get elected. These include: ASISU visibility, Knowledge about campus resources, Campus aesthetics, Retention and communication and to Improve the inner workings of ASISU.
“ASISU acts as the voice between faculty senate and regular students. They have that bridge of connection. ASISU is the voice of the students overall not just with administrators,” Winslow said.
Winslow and two other people want to be the next Senator for the College of Arts and Letters. Pamela Pascali is the second of the two ISU4U party members running. The third candidate, Stephen Aeifegha, is running as an independent.
While Winslow is running against two other people, Jha is running for president uncontested. As part of their campaigns, Jha and Winslow are reaching out to their professors and other faculty members in their respective colleges. They are hoping to spend about 5 minutes prior to the beginning of each class talking to students about ASISU and their respective campaigns.
While many candidates are running with ISU4U, there are some candidates who are running independently. One of those candidates is Zandrew Webb, running as Senator for the College of Business.
“I chose to run for ASISU, because I wanted to make a difference. I think that ISU is a great university, however, I feel that it has lacked in recent years student participation at sporting events on campus. I’m running to change this and create a stronger community among fellow students,” Webb said.
In the 2019-2020 ASISU election, only 773 out of 8,183 eligible students cast their vote, with a 9.45% participation rate. That small number is very concerning to Jha.
One reason Jha believes voting has been so low is that students don’t know what ASISU does for students.
“Students should know about ASISU. We are here for you. I just want students to know who we are,” said Jha.
According to Camdon Kay, ASISU President, students need to vote because the organization is their voice on campus.
“ASISU affects every fee-paying student on every one of our campuses. Student government acts as a liaison to administration and a catalyst for change on campus. By getting involved, you can make ISU work for you,” Kay said.
Members of the elections commission also worked to make voting last five days. This is longer than it has been in previous years and they hope that it contributes to a higher number of voting. “We wanted it to be long because we wanted to take advantage of a whole week of us advertising to students,” said Gabriela Lemus, Elections Publicity Coordinator.
Voting opens in BengalWeb on March 16 at 12:00 A.M. and closes on March 20 at 5:00 P.M. Results are expected to be released shortly thereafter. In the meantime, voters can find information about all of the candidates at isu.edu/elections/voters-guide-to-candidates/.
