Editor’s Note: This is the second of a three part series about the Illinois Student Association, a student lobbying group. On Thursday, students will decide in a referendum whether to continue paying $1 to keep NIU a part of the ISA.

When Sheila Heitzig of Western Illinois University in Macomb was asked how the school’s Illinois Student Association referendum was going, she looked at the board of directors and sighed.

“You guys are going to hate me,” Heitzig said.

She explained she was having trouble with her student senate because they were unaware of exactly what the ISA does. So, besides the normal “Yes” and “No” on the referendum ballot, WIU’s senate decided to also add “Don’t understand.”

The board decided the third choice would not work, and if a referendum will go in March for WIU, the wording will have to be changed.

And last week, the WIU student government decided against having the referendum at all.

Getting universities to become a part of the ISA is important in order to gain more student support and badly-needed revenue, but passing a referendum means also getting the different student governments to cooperate.

“A lot of students don’t understand what the ISA is all about which is sad because we need the leadership,” said Todd Drafall, the ISA director from the University of Illinois at Champaign.

Drafall said U of I student governments have had their problems dealing with the ISA. In 1988, a U of I report criticized the way ISA Executive Director David Starrett was selected, low university membership and the purchase of a $20,000 computer system.

“It is incomprehensible that a fledgling state student association, which is dependent on student fee money, should purchase such an expensive item,” the report stated.

But now, the relationship between the U of I and the ISA have improved to the point where the U of I’s student government created an ISA committee with a $15,000 budget.

Drafall said he talks often with Starrett and ISA members.

“When a board item came up, Dave (Starrett) would call me for input. When I went to a board meeting, I knew everything,” Drafall said.

Heitzig is the chairman for the Illinois Board of Higher Education Student Advisory Committee. She said the advisory board cannot do the work of the ISA.

“There is only so much SAC (student advisory committee) can do. We are all full-time students and we only meet 10 times a year,” Heitzig said.

“The only real work-time we have is one Saturday a month. As for a united committee effort, it is hard to organize.

“The ISA has a full-time staff. It has the capability that SAC could never have,” she said.

But one of the most impressed by the ISA was Ralph Horn from Wilbur Wright College, a community college in Chicago.

Horn said the ISA helped him win a battle with school officials about keeping school lockers and making the campus more accessible to the disabled.

“On a personal level, as I am disabled, that means a lot,” Horn said. “The people from the ISA, they are not disabled, but they care enough to get involved.

“You are talking about two people that do the work of four,” Horn said.

Next: Is the ISA good for NIU?