[EDIT] MPOWER – A new slate, comprehensive platform.

Well folks (what a delay),

It’s time to start up ASM election season — tonight, the candidates for ASM Student Council and Student Services Finance Committee will step forward and present themselves. And as of 1 p.m. today, we have an official list of the candidates running on this “MPOWER” slate:

Mission: to forward  the student movement and empower Madison students to take higher education issues through ASM

“We believe higher education should be affordable, campus should be a safe and comfortable living environment, and that student fees should support student services [emphasis mine] that improve students’ lives.

CALS: Jolie Lizotte [Campus Coalition Coordinator for WISPIRG], Jennifer Le

Education: Danez Smith [First Wave Scholar], Jeanette Martishared gov committee on non-resident tuition appeals, connections to MSCS, MeCha]

Human Ecology/Pharm: Jasmine Savoy[Posse Scholar], Peter Lorenz [intern of Academic n [Former member of Affairs]

Letters and Science: Tina Trevino Murphy [CWC], Jonah Zinn [Academic Affairs Chair], Dakota Alcantara-Camacho [First Wave, with MySpace page], Pete Clancy, Jessi Indresano [CWC Finance], Brittany Moes, Ace Hillary, Molly Byers, Beth Haung [SLAC], Jake Burow [SSFC members,SLAC], Zach Ivins [Academic Affairs], Kayla Lubenow [Recruitment coordinator for Legislative Affairs Committee, United Council]

OK, so this is obviously an attempt to get back SSFC funds for groups like CWC and push council to the left. But here’s my question: This was partially organized by Max Love, yet he doesn’t seem to be running. Why not? Does he want to be the behind-the-scenes guy on this?

Anyway, Love made clear in the press release he sent out that a lot of this has to do with the flaws in the seg fee process. I’m not sure what “flaws” could really be found. CWC got denied because they had flawed numbers and SSFC wouldn’t budge on that. Next year they’ll get accepted and it’ll be seen as a “win” for MPOWER. But if CWC is helping run a slate just to ensure they’re funding, it seems a little overprotective to me. But, meh, we’ll see who they run for SSFC. [I assume Burrow will be one.]

Other than that, what is MPOWER’s platform?[Edit] Here’s the platform. Actually pretty extensive. Highlights:

• MPOWER members will BLOG! It will also share info about Robert’s Rules of order. Uh…OK. This assumes they’ll know them.
• Fighting for space for MeCha and CWC. What a shock.
• Standing up, not with administration all the time. This is actually fairly important, as I think many get the impression sometimes that Junger and Templeton have daily tea dates with Berquam and Biddy.
• Getting funds, again for CWC, Wunk Sheek, etc. Also fighting against capital budget projects and state raids.
• Support Student Loan Reform, “affordable” tuition, textbook programs and supporting the DREAM Act.
• SAFECab funding to be restored. “Safety needs to be convenient.” OK, but safety doesn’t = convenience. Remember that distinction.
• Fighting Hate Crimes.
• Support for the MSC Satellite.
• Expanding the definition of a “direct service” for student groups. They mention how sad it is that child care is not viewed as a direct service. Remember, direct service tailored to as much of campus as possible. If you want to contract with a program, fine, but don’t use that as justification for why CWC got screwed out of funding.
• Opposition to NatUp. Good. Kill it. (see below)
• Support for HPV vaccinations. Huh. I actually think that’s not a bad idea. Bit selective, but not a bad idea.
• SLAC issues: Cut nike’s contract.
• Tenant [EDIT] support services. I don’t know why I said website. Long day. We support it. Uh…OK, that’s already happening. As long as Williams sees it through. Which, I have no doubt that he won’t. will. [Edit: Jeez. I need to proof these things. Why I don't I just call Brandon a baby killer while I'm at it?]

Otherwise, one thing about the “affordability” – Do you want a tuition freeze? If so, maybe March 4 would have been a good jumping off point. Alas, no one really showed up at UW-Madison. (and by the way, if ANYONE knows who hung the mysterious banner over the Vilas bridge, please let me know.) But who knows. I don’t like it when people claim they want affordable schooling and then don’t say how to get there.

Anyway, here’s your first chance to make a bipartisan dent, MPOWER. : Kill this project. Sure, students here won’t get charged, by and large, until 3 years from now, but this thing is unnecessary and is being done under the veil of Rec Sports funds. It’s not grassroots, it’s pretty well institutionalized. And it means another 100 bucks down the drain each year. Given that there can certainly be a range of other seg fee raises in that amount of time, do you REALLY want this? I know I couldn’t give less of a shit. And hopefully grad students will come out against this. Or maybe it won’t get enough votes to matter. But if it seems like it will, MPOWER could run their candidates and run against this. Candidates shouldn’t just run this in their platform, this needs to be the first show of strength in defeating this if they’re to be taken seriously.

Edit: Three more people running, according to this facebook page: Cale Plamann (Law, CWC helper), Krisselm Lopez-Camacho and Sam Stevenson (Medicine, Student Progressive Dane, BH Columnist)

While I was gone — your belated ASM/UW Recap

Hey, remember me?

For those who were wondering where all the updates were, well, I got tied up in something. But here’s the good news: That something ends tomorrow! So let’s get back to business, shall we? Here’s what happened while I was gone:

-SAC Governing Board doled out their space – after ditching most of the “new process” they had to avoid VPN violations, they tried it using an older method. What do you know, it worked! From the audio of the meeting I listened to, it seemed kind of arbitrary the first time around and people seemed confused over the whole process (with Rep. Krull being a notable case of said confusion) but it’s good to see this has served as a nice learning experience for the group. And, as usual, Gosselin felt vindicated in his assessment.

-Student Council gets into fights, fights small battles, dismisses sensible legislation: So, there’s been a lot more going on with Student Council than usual, but as a run down:

• They got the Union naming vote onto the ballot! Unfortunately, the Union/ASM hybrid committee tasked with choosing the finalists picked some really bland ones. Don’t want to offend, do we? More on that later.
• Chair Tyler Junger wants to make sure ASM funds don’t get raided again (for those who don’t remember, UW took about $180K from ASM to comply with the state budget theft). Rep. Max Love would like to look into suing the University and getting that money back. At the very least, he’d like to point out that UW should not have raided ASM funds as they didn’t apply. (or were strictly prohibited from these raids) Junger says it’s a bad idea to sue because it could either save us from future raids or give precedent for raiding funds in the future. One’s a gamble, the other is a safe bet. Thoughts? I know I need to actually look into this further tonight.
• On a far less important note, Junger was rather upset that Student Judiciary switched around seats in Student Council: According to this, one seat from Education will be transferred to the graduate school. (anyone want to write me in?) SJ has precedent for doing this, but Junger thinks that opens the door to more law-making from SJ. In an e-mail to me in response to my article this week, he said this:

For the record, SJ being able to make ASM law should be hugely disturbing to students.  There’s a reason the legislature is elected and the judiciary is appointed; it’s council’s job to make the rules and SJ’s job to interpret them.  When SJ decides to start making rules on their own, there’s not a way to stop it unless you nip it in the bud early; otherwise they can claim “precedent” for creating what is, according to the ASM constitution, law.

I’m the head of the legislature.  That’s our job.  Banal task this is not.

Fair enough, it probably isn’t something SJ should be doing. But is SJ making any other orders of a similar variety? Or they creating new committees? Are they moving money around? Is there any indication they might do so after this? Probably not. This confusion probably came from the fact that the student election commission is housed under SJ, so it must be their area, right? Probably not. If Junger wants to fight the battle, get it written into the bylaws, but let’s not get out of hand. Students should not be disturbed by this, because it has extremely little to do with them. Just like most of ASM.

• Written Responsibility Act proposed by Erik Paulson would have had committee chairs give monthly written reports to Student Council. It failed. One reason? Apparently someone said the Badger Herald does a decent job on their own. Flattering, but, that’s not the point. Second reason? Well, Melissa Hanley better hope Adelaide misinterpreted her statements. Because this pisses me off more than anything in the last few weeks: “Shared Governance Committee Chair Melissa Hanley said sometimes she has had too much committee work on her plate, and she did not have time to write a report.” WRONG. Even if it was a bulletpointed list of things that happened, you should have time to get a few paragraphs together explaining what’s going on. I have to run a newspaper, take graduate classes, write this blog, fend off controversy and try and maintain a relationship with my girlfriend. And I STILL write a monthly report to our board of directors. And it’s mandated. There is NO EXCUSE. If you can’t stop to write a summary of your activities, then maybe you’re not cut out for this job.

But hey, not everything ASM related is screwed up! Carl Fergus, Adam Johnson and Tom Templeton headed out to D.C. to help push for a bill reforming student loans. Unfortunately, it seems as if they’ve been sidelined by United States Student Association, who pushed to get the bill tacked onto the health care bill (which happened), which apparently looked closer to passing than the student loan bill on it’s own. Still, good to see they’re trying to build a Big 10 system of student advocates.

Hey, remember that whole ASM questionnaire thing I was trying to set up? Well, it’s all going up today. Promise. Only got about a third of council to respond, but the responses are interesting, if nothing else. We’re back in business, baby!