Introducing Blake

Greetings, blog readers!

I am Blake Ruane, a senior English major with a minor in creative writing, and I was born and raised right here in Cedar Falls, Iowa. I've spent the past four years on campus working for the UNI Alumni Association (in addition to going to class, of course), where I went from running reports and stuffing envelopes as a freshman to acting as program coordinator for the student alumni organization UNI Students Today Alumni Tomorrow (STAT) as both a junior and a senior. I'm also involved with the student organization Connecting Alumni To Students (CATS), serving as co-chair of the Communications Committee. I began writing opinion columns for the Northern Iowan at the start of the fall semester, and that experience has led me here.

Now, I want to be clear about something. I am no Adam Haselhuhn. I am no Trevor Boeckmann. I've never held a position in NISG, and I can appreciate that that might cause you to question my qualifications for writing for this blog. But I also want it to be clear that you don't have to be in NISG to be engaged in student government, and one of the reasons I agreed to write for this blog was to help dispel the ridiculous notion that NISG does not affect anyone but the people in it. I've never held a position in NISG, but that hasn't stopped me from attending senate meetings, following the last two elections (with frequent visits to this very website, I might add), and becoming a regular visitor to the NISG office (though whether they appreciate my company or not remains to be seen). I'm not an active member, but I've been playing the role of an interested observer for almost three years now.

And in those three years, I've come to discover that I'm something of a rare breed. How many people on campus even know what NISG stands for? Or where a senate meeting is held? Or where the NISG office is even located? Not enough, in my opinion. I can't even tell you how many times I've heard students repeat the same question: "What does NISG even do, anyway?" I don't bring to the table the credentials of a Trevor or an Adam, but what I do have is a strong desire to educate the uninitiated. Of course, I do realize that I'm not going to be able to reverse campus-wide apathy in the span of a couple weeks. But what I can do is evaluate, question and scrutinize each of the candidates to the best of my abilities, so that when those students go to vote in MyUNIverse, they've got more than simple name recognition to help make their decisions.

Over the course of the next two weeks, this blog will be your one-stop shop for all things NISG. I will keep you updated on who the candidates are, what they are doing, how they are doing it, and whether their platforms are fit to stand on. I'm excited to be blogging this election and I hope you'll keep checking back for more posts!