Logan Ramsey

News Editor

Students submitted their votes and elected two new executives to the Associated Students of Idaho State University (ASISU), juniors Zane Webb and Ailie Maclean of the Amplify Party as President and Vice President. Their terms will begin at the start of summer, and the soon-to-be executive officers are hoping to build a more connected campus community.

Lack of student engagement was one of Webb’s motivating factors in deciding to run for president. He was previously approached by Logan Schmidt, a past president of ASISU, who suggested he run. This led him to run as a Senator in 2020. Webb lost the race but took it as a learning experience.

Then during the Fall 2020 semester, as many activities were greatly scaled back due to the pandemic, Webb became frustrated with the lack of student involvement on campus, “Which is completely understandable under the circumstances, but that still doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a hole that needed to be filled, and for the following year, I wanted to be a part of that hole to help fill the gap.”

Maclean decided that she wanted to run for office when she went and saw her first ASISU meeting and saw how the process worked. She thought to herself, “Wow, I’d really like to be a part of this decision-making process and I’d love to try and help make ISU the best that it can be.”

As executives of ASISU, their jobs will be to represent the student body to the administration and advocate for the policies students want to see. Webb and Maclean want to see a larger ASISU presence on campus, and for more students to recognize what it is and see it as a resource.

“I think we’re going to take a more aggressive stance when it comes to our positions this upcoming year than maybe we’ve seen in the past,” Maclean said.

Maclean attributed two main factors to the Amplify party’s campaign success, as all of their senate candidates won their respective elections. The first was their extensive campaign advertising, and the second was their platform ideas, which got the attention of students.

“I think we had really structured goals and ideas, and I think that it kind of helped students realize that we’re serious about our positions and about being elected,” Maclean said.

One of the ways they hope to connect campus is by fulfilling one of their main campaign promises, establishing a student community app for Idaho State University. They’re still in the concept phase of creating the app, but something they know they would like to include is a comprehensive list of clubs and organizations to make it easier for students to find that information.

“There are so many directions you could take the app and so many features you could roll out, however, if you overcomplicate things, then it’s just going to be another platform students don’t use,” Webb said.

Webb and Maclean want to keep the app simple. They said that they might reach out to other universities and see what their platform might look like, or they could meet with student affairs and combine it with their already existing app. More details should follow as they move ahead in the development process.

Another way they hope to bring the students closer together is by establishing a community garden on campus. This is also in the development stages, but they already started on a trial run to get a better idea of the logistics involved. Not only would this provide a community space for students to interact, but it would also help them live more sustainable lives.

Another initiative they’re in support of is a Sustainability Petition proposed by ISU students Rituraj Yadav and Emma Watts. This petition aims to commit ISU to take action to create a more sustainable future for the university.

Webb and Maclean want the student body to know that they’re committed to taking action in their term as executives.

“We want to see real change, and we’ve been taking the right steps to see that change occur…” Webb said. “(We’re) showing the students that we’re going to buy in and that we can make this university even better, and with their help, the sky’s the limit. So, just by creating that snowball effect, we’re going to build a huge amount of snow by the end of our term hopefully.”