During 2022-23 school year, students from the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs are representing the IU student body at the university’s highest levels.
Fourth-year students Kyle Seibert and Bell Pastore were elected to their positions in the IU Student Government last spring and took office in April. The two campaigned with a focus on helping IU students thrive on campus socially, physically, and academically.
Seibert, president of IUSG, has a focus on making IU home for students of all kinds by the time he leaves office next April.
“On April 15, 2023, I want everyone on this campus, all 50,000 students, to feel just a little more connected and maybe secure in their spot on campus than what they were before our administration,” Seibert said. “Whether that’s connected to a student group or connected to their work in a lab or their work just on their academics, I want people to feel like IU really is home.”
Seibert and Bell ran on the Thrive campaign, which features three pillars—safety, inclusion, and wellbeing—that aim to improve the IU student experience.
“They’re an overarching scope of what we want to hit on throughout the year,” Pastore said
One part of the safety pillar includes the Red Zone Initiative, a collaboration with Residential Programs and Services to educate students on resources regarding sexual violence, which statistically occurs at the highest rate during the “Red Zone” between August and Thanksgiving on college campuses.
“Our entire goal is to create this educational campaign that we can give to all students through RPS and make sure they know the resources on campus, including different schools and different counseling and reporting bases, that can be utilized,” Pastore said.
During the summer, the two met with IU President Pamela Whitten, had lunch with O’Neill Dean Sian Mooney, and attended multiple IU Board of Trustees meetings. All of this before students set foot on campus for the fall 2022 semester.
Seibert and Pastore initially met in the O’Neill Civic Leaders Center, which is still an important part of their lives today. When Seibert first thought of running for IUSG president, he called Pastore to gauge her interest in running with him—a connection made in the CLC.
“It gave me that first group of friends,” Seibert said, “that first group of really exciting people that I’m still close with today.”
The two used a month-long campaign in March to embed themselves in every part of the IU student experience, experience they’ll use to make sure all IU students’ voices are heard.
“The best part of the campaign trail for me was being able to meet so many different people and connect with so many different organizations and groups that I had never interacted with or knew much about prior to launching our campaign,” Seibert said. “I think between Bell and I, we had over 200 meetings with student organizations and people in groups across 28 days. So it was a lot to squeeze into that short amount of time, but it was so fulfilling. I knew at the end of the day I had learned so much about this campus and the people that are here and about how I could make it better in my role as student body president.”
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