Integrated diversity. Campus safety. Jobs. Tuition allocation.

These issues are the ones that your student trustee candidates think are the most important to you.

Do you agree? Disagree?

But maybe more importantly, do you know what the student trustee is? Or the Illinois Student Senate? Or the Student Organization Resource Fee Board?

If you answered no to at least one, I’m sure you’re in the majority of students on this campus, and even I didn’t know much until recently. But what you should know is that the elections for the student trustee, as well as leadership positions in ISS and the SORF Board, are Tuesday and Wednesday.

These elections will determine the students that will decide what matters most to you, and then those students will act on those issues.

But let’s take a few steps back to clear up the air, starting with ISS.

Essentially, ISS is your student council; it has over 100 members who represent the voice of the student body, and it makes issues known to campus administration, as well as local, state and federal governments. Students directly elect senators who represent each college, and then those senators select an executive staff (president, vice president, etc.). Senators can propose resolutions, which should there be enough support among ISS, could eventually be presented to the University administration.

SORF, part of a mandatory $6 fee paid by all University students, is used to fund registered student organizations. The SORF Board, comprised of eight elected students and three appointed staff, decides how to divvy up those funds to the RSOs. 

The last of the leadership positions is the student trustee, who represents the Urbana-Champaign campus in the University’s board of trustees. There are also student trustees at the Chicago and Springfield campuses. The trustee can propose resolutions the same way ISS can.

But honestly, this small amount of information took me entirely too long to find. And once I found it, it took too long to decipher and piece together. At first, I was under the impression that the March 5 and 6 elections were only for ISS. Then, I realized that there is a Student Election Commission that organizes the election, which also contains the SORF Board and the student trustee elections. Then I had to go to all different sorts of websites, some semi-official looking, others very amateur, to find out what these organizations are. And then I tried to find out who is running for each position, which I could never find for either ISS, the SORF Board or the student trustee, even after an hour of searching — 50 minutes too long.

This is a glaring problem.

It appears there is no way for the average student to easily stay informed about student government, and especially about the upcoming elections.

ISS’ website does not even list the election on its event calendar. How are we to know all who are running for student trustee, unless we went to the debate Tuesday night or read the Daily Illini story that followed it? ISS should not expect a debate that attracted fewer than 100 audience members to inform the campus, and it should not rely on the media to relay information about the candidates. While it is the job of the media to inform readers, it is not the media’s job to serve as publicity for an organization. I doubt this is ISS’ intention, but its lack of internal information released to the public is disappointing.

The same goes for the SORF Board and ISS senators. The SORF Board has not posted updates on its Facebook page since Nov. 6. And unlike the 2012 elections, there are no personal statements online from student senatorial candidates.

I’m not trying to attack what these bodies do. And yes, if a student goes out to the information nights and debates that have been held for these elections, they can figure out who is running. But why can’t this information be easily available online?

Perhaps ISS and the SORF Board simply have not put the candidate lists up online yet. However, the elections are four short days away. We need more time than that.

Come March 5 and 6, log on to vote.illinois.edu to cast your ballot. Though you may not know whom you’re voting for, there will be other proposals on the ballot, including a bus fee increase and renovations to Assembly Hall.

My hope is that the new members voted in to these organizations will work on keeping the campus as informed as possible.

Kirsten is a sophomore in Media. She can be reached at [email protected].