Sophomore Marcus Greely doesn’t remember voting in last year’s Student Senate election. Nor does he remember knowing when it was or having much information about it.

“I don’t even know what a Student Senator would do, I guess,” he said.

With this year’s Student Senate elections starting Feb. 28, two students are working to inform students about a group of candidates and what they plan to do.

Juniors Jacob Boer and Andrew Werthmann want to familiarize the student body with a number of individuals running for Student Senate. To do this they plan to organize a block of individuals running for Student Senate under the umbrella of an organization called Students For Action.

“By running together in a group we have a stronger ability to create change in government,” Boer said.

The group of roughly 20 students plans to take a grassroots route to finding student support through word of mouth and e-mail, Boer said.

Boer said he believes students often go to the polls unaware of the candidates they are voting for. Students For Action, he said, will work to provide information to students before they vote.

“I think if we put some organization behind it … some credible people will, I think, get elected rather than just a random assortment of people with weird names,” he said.

Boer also said the group hopes to get higher student turnout at the polls. He said he was disappointed by how few students elected current Student Senate President Chad Wade.

“My amazement last year was that our current student body president, Chad Wade, was elected with 430 votes … and out of (about) 10,500 student that means he only got four percent of the vote,” he said. “And I just think that’s absurd.”

A number of students first heard about the group after they received an e-mail from Werthmann, that said the group was comprised of “progressive-minded individuals” to run for senate.

“We feel that with an effective ‘coupe’ we will have the ability to create change which actually represents the interests of students,” Werthmann said in the e-mail.

The e-mail essentially was designed to pique people’s interest, Werthmann said.

“Some people are seeing this as a hostile takeover, and that is not what this is,” Boer said.

Rather, Werthmann said what the group wants to get students interested in student government.

“We’re trying to get people excited about possibilities,” he said.

Werthmann also said the group’s purpose is to get pro-active students on Student Senate. It does not mean that the group will stay in the bloc if elected.

The possibility of a partisan voting bloc on Senate is somewhat concerning, Wade said.

“My concern is … we’re creating partisanship in a non-partisan organization,” he said. “This creates the potentiality … for someone saying ‘You need to vote with us because you are a member of the bloc I’ve created.'”

Wade also said he has some concerns about what the students attached to the bloc represent, particularly that they may be representing only those with a progressive agenda.

The e-mail suggested they were looking for progressive students, not just a large group of students to run, he said. By pushing this, Wade said the group is not curing student apathy toward voting. Rather, they’re curing the apathy of progressive minded students, he said.

While this is the first time Wade said he has seen an organized effort to get a bloc of students elected, he has seen others loosely band together to get onto Student Senate when hot-button issues came up. For example, he said more athletes became involved in Senate when tickets for sporting events became free for students.

In this case, Wade said The Flip Side’s success in getting student segregated fees probably spurred the movement.

“I think it could definitely be a cause and effect thing,” he said. “They’ve seen what Student Senate can do and have decided to take an interest.”

Werthmann is a founder of The Flip Side and Boer is a contributor to the publication.

“I have every reason to believe most (people) are coming into this (election) to represent all students,” Wade said. Problems come, he said, when “some (people) are coming in with two or three things to accomplish. Then we start getting into murkier water.”