Thursday, September 29, 2016 | Volume 212 | Number 28 | 40 cents | iowastatedaily.com | An independent student newspaper serving Iowa State since 1890.
StuGov elects Cody Smith as new PR chair By David.Perrin @iowastatedaily.com Student Government met Wednesday and elected Sen. Cody Smith to the position of Public Relations chair, previously held by former Sen. Peter Myers. The bill was introduced during special orders, and Vice Speaker Conner Tillo nominated Smith for the open chair position. “I think Smith is very well qualified for the position,” Tillo said. Before being voted in, Smith took the podium to say a few words about his plans for the PR position and how he could benefit the Student Government while serving it. “I’m not sure how [the position] was run in the past, but I can see from my experience, at this time, that it does need to run more effectively, and I think I’m the person to do that,” Smith said. The most prominent of Smith’s ideas to improve the way the chair position is handled is simple: He believes the PR Senate positions first need filled, and then he thinks the Student Government needs to be more involved with PR issues as a whole. “As far as I’m concerned with what the Public Relations Committee does, the more people, the better; however, there is a line at which if people aren’t dedicated, then they shouldn’t be on the committee,” Smith said. The committee is currently short Senate positions and is looking to fill them as soon as possible. Smith wants the future candidates to be suitable and dedicated to the roles that they will eventually fill within the Student Government. “I think that it’s important to be strategic in the fact that we represent this body,” Smith said. “And we might not agree with everything that happens in this body, but we always need
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A LEGEND IN LECTURES Kennedy DeRaedt/Iowa State Daily
Pat Miller is director of the Iowa State Lectures Program, pictured above in the Great Hall. She is responsible for over 130 speakers per year who speak on campus.
By AustinAnderson @iowastatedaily.com Pat Miller ate insects with Jay Leno, kept the ashes of Gloria Steinem’s final cigarette, and after 35 years, produced one of the country’s most successful lecture series ... all on only five hours of sleep a night. Nineteen hours after a lecture on polar bears and 18 hours after a lecture on the Arab Spring, Miller slowly leans in and squints at the computer in front of her. She could be examining a number of different things. Potentially finalizing details of one of the over 120 speakers she helps bring into the lecture series each school year as director of the Lectures Program. Or she may be making sure the cookies she ordered for the first livestream of the first presidential debate will be in the Great Hall on time. “People have no idea how much goes into these lectures,” Miller said. It’s 2 p.m. on a Friday. There are no lectures for the next 77 hours, a rare break for the lecture series but far from a break for herself. Miller sits in her office at her desk across the hall from the post office in the Memorial Union. Her office isn’t big or elegant by any
means, but the character it displays is obvious. A far cry from the English faculty office she started out in over 35 years ago. When Miller took over the lecture program within a year of graduating from Iowa State, 38 lectures filled the calendar. Three and half decades later, that number has more than tripled. The history of those decades fill the shelves. Miller gets up from her seat and moves to the back of the office to examine some pictures. She stumbles across a picture from 1984 of herself and Gloria Steinem, the feminist icon, social activist, writer, editor and champion of women’s rights. “I forgot I had that,” Miller said while examining the picture. “We were both much younger then.” The ‘80s are represented in Miller’s office by a glass bottle holding the cigarette ashes of Steinem. Steinem was trying to quit smoking when she spoke at Iowa State in October of 1984. Miller gave Steinem a ride back to her hotel when Steinem knocked off the ashes of her cigarette into the ashtray in Miller’s van. Miller said those ashes were part of the last cigarette Steinem ever smoked. Thirtytwo years later, the ashes are preserved on Miller’s shelf and might be seen by Steinem when she returns to Iowa State
on Oct. 11. The ‘90s are represented in Miller’s office by a Willie Nelson poster, from when he performed at the football stadium, hiding behind a bookshelf. “What’s the date say on the poster?” Miller asks, having returned to her chair. April 24, 1993. ‘He’s great,” Miller responds before going into specific detail about her encounter with the country singer more than 23 years earlier. The 2000s are highlighted by getting Bill Nye the Science Guy to venture to campus. The five years of phone calls, handwritten invitations and emails to get Nye to easily fill Stephens Auditorium to maximum capacity were worth it, but not the longest amount of time Miller has spent recruiting talented speakers. Steinem most recently came to Iowa State in 1997. It took 19 years of persistence to get her back for her lecture “My Life on the Road” this October. It took 25 years to get Margaret Atwood to finally come in November. A replica of Miller’s thumb is on a shelf next to Leonardo Dicaprio’s “pee bottle” from the movie “The Aviator.”
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Alex Connor/Iowa State Daily
CyRide is seeking input as it looks to change several routes in Ames.
Changes are coming to CyRide routes in Ames Hannah Olson/Iowa State Daily
Lilly Ledbetter addresses an audience during her “Equal Pay for Equal Work” event in the Oak Room of the Memorial Union on Wednesday.
Despite losing voice, activist spreads message of equality at Iowa State By Brandon.Ghazali @iowastatedaily.com By the time Lilly Ledbetter had arrived at Iowa State on Wednesday morning, she had all but lost her ability to speak. But that didn’t stop the women’s equality activist from making her voice heard on campus Wednesday afternoon in support of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. “I’m miserable in this situation because I’ve gotta talk,” Ledbetter said regarding her voice. Ledbetter first gained recognition as an advocate for equal pay with her lawsuit against her former employer, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, which she filed after learning from an anonymous tip that she was getting paid thousands less than the men in her position at the company where she’d been working for 19 years. She initially won the case, then subsequently lost after an appeal to
the Supreme Court resulted in a 5-4 decision in Goodyear’s favor. The Roberts-led court had ruled that Ledbetter “should have filed suit within 180 days of her first unequal paycheck” despite the fact that she had no way of knowing that she was being paid unfairly before she received the tip, according to her official website. The decision prompted Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who dissented the court’s decision, to urge Ledbetter to continue to fight back. Finally, on Jan. 29, 2009, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act became the first bill that President Barack Obama would sign into law. It stated that the 180-day period for filing pay discrimination suits resets with each paycheck affected by discrimination, rather than just the first instance. Due to her difficulty speaking, Ledbetter’s travel partner, Sue Dvorsky, acted as an intermediary between Ledbetter and the audience. Together, they advocated
By Thomas.Nelson @iowastatedaily.com
for the need of political activism from students and the importance of the election, all while telling the story of Ledbetter’s own nine-year fight against discrimination. They also fielded questions from those in attendance, even allowing them to tell their own stories of facing discrimination. Dvorsky — who serves as the director of women’s outreach for the Clinton campaign in Iowa — told the Daily how lucky she felt to have such a “great gig” traveling with Ledbetter. Dvorsky said that after leaving Iowa State they would immediately head to the other events scheduled Wednesday in Fort Dodge, Waterloo and Davenport, noting that they also had an event in Marion, but it was cancelled due to flooding in the area. “It’s 10 events in two days for her, and that’s the schedule she wanted,” Dvorsky said. Story County Democrats chair Jan
After nine years of record ridership, CyRide is looking for a change. CyRide has gone from 4 million rides a year to almost 7 million rides a year, said Sheri Kyras, director of transit at CyRide. “We have the same basic route structure that we had when we were at 4 million rides,” Kyras said. “Each year we continue to grow.” Enrollment and the population of Ames have both increased, although the city of Ames has not increased as fast as the student population, Kyras said. “There’s been more pressure within the community and within CyRide as well,” Kyras said. CyRide’s routes haven’t been looked at seriously since 2006. “Roughly 93 percent of the riders are students,” said Warren Madden, emeritus senior vice president for business and finance. “The basic routes probably haven’t been reviewed for 15 to 20 years I would guess.” The change is being pushed by the City of Ames Transit Agency Board of Trustees, of which Madden is a member. The board acts as a representative group of students, the city and the public all coming together, Kyras said. Forums, rider surveys and public meetings are being planned to ensure student input. “Those who don’t ride can also provide input, because there’s a large sector of the student population that don’t ride CyRide and we want know what they think,” said Kate Gregory, senior vice president for university services and member of the transit board. Questions are being explored by a consulting firm to determine the future of CyRide. The consulting firm chosen was Nelson NyGaard, out of Seattle, Washington. “Should the route systems be expanded, and if so, where,” Madden said. “The bulk of the ridership is around where student occupancy is, or the Iowa State Center.”
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