Student Body President Mason Wenzel and Student Body Vice President Katie Mastel ran on a platform of finance, community and academics.

The policies for each are: “Finance – Interactive fee chart, simplify organizational funding, advocate against fee increases, consolidate online class fees. Community – Coffee After Class, national achievement recognition, reformat listservs, assault prevention programming. Academics – Expanding open textbooks, implement mid-semester reviews, introduce cost free scantrons, make graduation credits consistent,” Wenzel said.

The platform is going well, and they are close to completion on the majority of the platform.

The interactive fee chart is in development with the NDSU IT department to construct an efficient and aesthetically appealing design for the visual.

The simplify organizational funding will be tended to in the later half of the semester in the Finance Code Review Committee where the student organization funding model and process will be reviewed.

“The continual push against raising student fees is difficult, but straight forward. We are making all the appointments that involve student fees based around the mentality of no increased fees,” Wenzel said.

Beginning in Oct., the Student Fee Advisory Board and it will be continually voiced to emphasize that students do not want a fee increase.

A proposal has been submitted to the State Board of Higher Education, with assistance from the Vice President and Associate VP for Finance and Administration, in order to consolidate online class fees and to make the change official for the Fall 2018 semester.

The Coffee After Class program is officially up and running. “All students are now able to receive a voucher from Student Government to take a faculty or staff member at NDSU to a free beverage from the university coffee shops,” Wenzel said.

A new policy for Listserv’s will be coming out from our technology commission that will replace the current Listserv format.

On Sept. 7, Newsfeed was introduced and will only be sent out to all students on Mondays and Thursdays to help reduce the clutter in inboxes.

The visual format will be restructured to make reading the announcements easier “like reading the morning paper” and it will be “clean and efficient” according to Wenzel.

A board has been created with the entire purpose to advocate and fund the implementation of Open Textbooks.

“We have created a fixed cash flow to help sustain the Progressive Education grant to ensure open textbooks continue to be implemented in the coming years, we also have successfully funded a course in psychology and the entirety of introductory biology,” Wenzel said.

Mid-Semester Reviews is in beta testing with the entire College of Business this fall semester, and the plan is to branch out in the spring semester to the entire university.

Scantrons will be provided by the professor, at no extra cost, for all courses.

Wenzel said, “A resolution will be introduced to Student Senate in the coming weeks that will endorse the University’s movement towards making a degree set to 120 credits.”

“This is the start of the amazing initiatives the Student Government has to offer this year. I am convinced he has the best cabinet members Student Government has ever seen, and they are all working as hard as they can to benefit the students. Without them, Katie and I would not be as far into our platform as we are today,” Wenzel said.