UI Republicans, Democrats and Greens represented their parties Wednesday night.
Three UI student political groups came together in the Phillips Hall auditorium Wednesday night to represent their favored presidential candidate and to broach issues that weren't discussed during Tuesday's national debate in St. Louis.
A 13-member panel of students representing Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Vice President Al Gore and Green Party candidate Ralph Nader answered questions posed by Pi Sigma Alpha National Political Science Honor Society.
Unlike the national debates, the Bush and Gore camps agreed to include the Nader group in the debate because of large area Green Party Support.
"We wanted to get voices going by including the Nader group, which is a strong contingent in Iowa," said Kedron Bardwell, the debate moderator and graduate advisor for Pi Sigma Alpha.
Each group was informed, prior to the debate, of the issues to be raised concerning health care, education, foreign policy, Medicare and Social Security.
Panelists echoed many of the sentiments of their favored candidates as a crowd of close to 100 cheered them on.
For the most part, the panelists exchanged friendly banter while staying focused on the topics.
"Gore believes in accountability and standards with funding for education. Without funding, we can't have standards, and without standards we can't have accountability," said UI junior Elizabeth Holst, a member of UI Students for Gore.
Bush's camp repeated his message of trusting the local communities to make decisions concerning education.
"Bush stands for not trusting big government and instead trusting the people," said Students for Bush Chairman Christian Kurasek.
Nader panelists put a strong emphasis on the influence that corporations have over the Democrat and Republican parties and discussed the growing similarities the two mainstream parties share.
"We need a government for the people and not corporations," said Peter Beresford Reed, a Students for Nader member.
Despite the success of the debate, in terms of clear representation of each presidential candidate, there were some grievances with the format.
Reed felt he was silenced on some issues he thought were pertinent to the campaign.
"I understood there was a format, but I wasn't able to speak on important issues because they weren't part of it," he said. "I feel this narrows the spectrum of what could have been discussed."