Date:2/21/00
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Leah White, UNI director of forensics, (319) 273-7200
Bruce Wickelgren, UNI individual events coach, (319) 273-5972
Catherine Palczewski, UNI debate team coach, (319) 273-2714
CEDAR FALLS, Iowa — The University of Northern Iowa's Individual Events Speech Team placed fifth at last weekend's (Feb. 12) Grace Walsh Individual Events Tournament held at the University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire. Twenty colleges and universities attended the tournament that was won by Bradley University, Peoria, Ill.
UNI senior Lucas Messer of Danville, and sophomore Candace Weiland of Cedar Falls placed first in duo interpretation. In individual events, Messer placed first in after dinner speaking and third in individual sweepstakes. Weiland also placed third in poetry interpretation.
Also placing were sophomore Carolynn Sween of Cedar Falls, sixth in communication analysis; freshman Amy Larsen of Ankeny, seventh in communication analysis; and senior Nicole Tremel of Dunlap, seventh in poetry interpretation.
The UNI Individual Events Speech Team is coached by Leah White, UNI director of forensics and an assistant professor of communications; and Bruce Wickelgren, UNI instructor of communications and director of individual events.
Earlier this month, UNI junior Melissa Peterson of Iowa City, was the fourth-place speaker at the Webster University Debate Tournament. The UNI debate team is coached by Catherine Palczewski, UNI associate professor of communications.
Both teams will travel regionally for the next several weekends, before attending national tournaments in March and April.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Matt Jochum, director of public relations and election commissioner, Northern Iowa Student Government, (319) 273-2650
Dennis Lindner, director, ITS- Information Systems, (319) 273-2424
CEDAR FALLS, Iowa — Northern Iowa Student Government (NISG) officials are hopeful that the move to online voting for Wednesday's (Feb. 23) election of a new president/vice president and senators will see an increase in the percentage of voter turnout.
“Instead of forcing students to come to specific campus locations to cast their ballots, they can cast their votes from any Web browser connection in the world,” said Matt Yochum, a UNI senior from Des Moines. As NISG's director of public relations, he also serves as the organization's elections commissioner.
“By taking the ballots to them, so to speak, we make it easier for students to have a voice in who is running student government,” said Jochum. “Those students away from the campus for such things as student teaching, cooperative education or study abroad, don't have to feel disenfranchised— they don't have to come to a dining center or a table in Maucker Union to cast their ballots as in previous elections.”
The new voting procedure received Senate approval at last week's (Feb. 16) meeting.
Julie Heiple, data access administrator in UNI's ITS-Information Systems, said previous NISG administrations made inquiries into developing such an online voting system, including its feasibility. Others had come to Information Systems with similar concepts for surveys on campus. So, procedures were designed with voting in mind.
“By the time NISG contacted us again, we had done some test samples and were able to finalize the procedure fairly quickly,” said Heiple.
She said when students come in to the student computer labs Wednesday, the default screen will have a link to the voting process. There will also be links on the UNI Home Page and the Access UNI page. The system will check their social security number and PIN, and give them the appropriate ballot online.
Heiple, who developed the HTML pages for the actual ballots, worked with Troy Bull, senior programmer analyst, who did the programming, and Valerie Turner, programmer analyst, who wrote the program to compile statistics for the election report. They are under the direction of Dennis Lindner, director of ITS-Information Systems.
Jochum said he expects to have election results within the hour following the 6 p.m. close of voting. Election commissioners will compare voter tallies with the number of votes cast and verify the results “much more quickly than the several hours it used to take us to go over polling results.”
Five sets of presidential/vice presidential candidates are running to be leaders of the student body. If no team wins a majority (50 percent plus one) of the votes cast, then a run-off election will be held, also online, Wednesday, March 1, between the top two vote-getting pairs.
Running mates in Wednesday's election for the top two spots are: Bob Tuttle and Rachel Dubec, both of Des Moines; Joshua Jepson of Durant and Jason Watters of Cedar Falls; Phil Parsons of Packwood and Matt Rasmusson of Cedar Falls; Dan Sterenchuk of Cedar Rapids and Mike Russell of Williams; and Ryan Welch and Craig Mallicoat, both of Cedar Falls.
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