Chair Williams a possibility, no Chair Templeton. Not even Rep. Templeton.

Well, as you can see on facebook if you’re part of the ASM inner circle (or part of the regular student body that the inner circle wishes to connect to), Brandon Williams is officially running for ASM Chair. He announced it tonight at SSFC. No shock there, as he’s been setting himself up for this for a bit now.

Here’s what IS shocking – Templeton isn’t just not running for chair, he’s not going to be running for anything. He won’t even be voting.

According to the updated election results on the ASM page: Templeton has dropped out of the Student Council seat he won. Still not sure why he’s done this, but Junger told BH College Editor Adelaide Blanchard that part of the reason was that he didn’t wanted to work elsewhere in the ASM framework, but not in SC.

The fallout? Adam Johnson now gets a seat on SC, which he narrowly lost to his Leg Affairs Vice Chair, Kyle Woolwich.

More analysis on this later, but one has to wonder — if this sets up a Zinn v. Williams chair battle, how will the CWC saga play out at Council? Will it?

[UPDATE] – Williams has also taken to announcing his candidacy via a new blog and unveiling one of the new policies he would champion – “The Open Door.” No, he’s not looking for ASM to open up trade in East Asia (Sorry, I have to have some way to show off that I got a degree in history, seeing as its useless in every other context), it’s about him being as available as possible, not having closed door meetings and reaching out to students, going to events, etc.

Modest goal, but hopefully it happens. Remember, Junger actually said he wanted to hold the first meeting of the regular session in open air in Library Mall. That didn’t exactly happen, did it?

Student Council 4/21/2010 live blog

Alright, we are a bit delayed here, but we’ll get started shortly.

Apparently, we’re going to be looking at the Operations budget from Finance Committee because Campus Women’s Center’s $33K grant might get cut? That’s the word on the street. Who knows for what reason.

6:37 – Started!

This is the last meeting of the session. By the way, this is really sparse today. No grad reps are here, Zinn is not here, Love is the only freshman rep…I guess no reason to come. But Kudos to those that did show up. [EDIT] Jamie Bemis is actually here. She’s a freshman rep. Thanks Max.

6:40 – Tina Trevino-Murphy – talking about CWC’s grant and asking that it not be amended.

6:42 – Olikara is up – He’s not running again for Diversity Chair for the next session. He wants to share his grand vision over his term. Printed out his original proposal when he ran as a first-semester freshman. Very indicative of that, he says. But a few things to note:

-Diversity commitee goals need to be aligned with ASM, shouldn’t be simply another detached program.

-When he started off, he held some listening sessions to find out the vision that students had. Your perspective is inherently not broad enough and you have to listen to those voices. Lived on the MLC at the time, but had those conversations with those not originally part of those organizations. Had been dictated by those who knew a lot about it and lived it at the time. We had to pretty fundamentally change course from the Plan 2008 context. I was lucky because Plan 2008 WAS Plan 2008 and we were concluding and deciding how to move forward. He was intrigued by my approach and invited me to speak in front of over 200 members of administration. Also invited to start working at the UW System level with Inclusive Excellence. Need to move it from a peripheral concern to a core policy.

Our approach has to fundamentally include every single student. If you’re excluding students, you’re having a very adverse effect on campus climate. So I became a full-time consultant and went around to all these campus units and making change. We established the diversity committee (non-existent from dormancy when he started), collaborated with MCSC with events in the Spring. It was a very important time to engage constituencies such as students and faculty. When I was deciding whether or not to continue in that role, I asked myself if there was anything else I could contribute. If I were to step down, that conversation would largely dissolve. We had to create some of the institutional structure to capitalize on this movement. I decided to continue on this campaign and make some of these really important structural changes on campus. Collaborated with a lot of Shared Gov appointees. We had some really serious conversations with them and we initiated a relaunch process for some administration approaches. Will relaunch in Fall 2010. The second side was students. We needed to find a new model that was sustainable that would help with these conversations. It resulted in the student leaders dialogue. You should read Jason Smathers‘ editorial to get some perspective on that, it brought a lot of people together to discuss these things seriously.

We were also talking about having things like this at SOAR. We’re creating a list of why these things worked so well. We finished the student side as well. And finally a feel a sense of conclusion to this whole campaign. It finally started happening. They are actually approaching these diversity issues differently at all kinds of campus units.

Admissions director search is also forcing us to have these conversations too. Gained a committment from every single candidate so far to fundamentally change the process to engaging student leaders in the student leaders in recruitment, changing the brand of the university, communicating the diversity of ideas here. From admissions to working with Vince Sweeney, we’re got a new approach to talking about these issues.

Max Love or Martin Uraga would be good for the Diversity Chair role.

Claps for Olikara.

6:58 - Andrea Nichols – Operations Grants – its a lot of money, I hope you’re taking a clear look at everything. I’m on SSFC, so I hope you take a long look at it all.

6:59 – Jen Kaiser – National Society of Leadership and Success – wants to appeal for $2800 membership dues which were not covered, because otherwise, they can’t stay as a chapter. Without these funds, they’d be deactivated. Members have already paid a one-time 75 dollar fee, so the 2800 is an additional fee needed to supply certain services for the group.

Bemis- How many members are there?

Kaiser – 756.

Madsen – what constitutes an active member?

Have to attend certain speaker events and activities, there are likely 300 or so active members.

Manes – Why did you miss your appeal?

Kaiser – We just missed it, its are first year.

Ziebell – Could you still be an RSO on campus?

Kaiser – We could do some bare bones things, but we’d lose access to the website to see goals.

Bemis – How was the 2800 funded this year?

Kaiser – When you start the chapter, they waive the fee.

Madsen – Are you aware of other chapters at other universities and how they do that?

Kaiser – they do this sort of thing.

Hanley – You mention that in addition to materials and speakers, what other benefits does this provide?

Kaiser – The website provides speaker videos, a job listing site.

Hanley – So, only active members who pay their dues can get to the website?

Kaiser – They already can get it.

Gosselin – How much money did get from finance?

Kaiser – We got 300.

Gosselin – and you requested?

Kaiser – 3,000.

7:08 – Adoption of Agenda.

Chair Reports

Work-Study – Fergus is absent.

Academic Affairs – Zinn is absent

Diversity – Olikara said everything already.

Finance – Beemsterboer – most of this will be done later. Going to have feedback sessions, etc.

Leg. Affairs – Thanks for all the memories, look forward to working with you.

Nominations Board – Chair Sharpe – Needs time.

Shared Gov. – Hanley – Finished up interviews for appointments to Shared Gov. committees. Anyone who interviewed should be recieving that in the next day or two. Next Shared Gov. Chair will have to deal with duties. Didn’t have a meeting last week because of interviews.

Student Print – Had a meeting today, but because I wasn’t notified about it, I don’t know what happened. No report.

SACGB – Last meeting on Sunday. Some cleaning uptodo. New space app and space eval form. Those have to be finalized and we have to pass those on to the next governing board. We’ll look at those again. We also have bylaw changes, but those will have to wait until next session.

Nominations Board – As I informed you guys, we were in the process of making some of the interview questions make sense. Some of the descriptions are posted, the rest will be posted later. Will be on the server soon. I’ve advertised those positions for 17th Session. Those applications will be due April 28. I understand there might not be a meeting on May 1st because of Mifflin. If there is a meeting, I might extend those applications to give more people a chance to apply. I’ve been advertising it with one e-mail per week, I’ll talk to Ken about it too.

Ziebell – is there anything on the website?

Sharpe – Link on main page links to openings.

Chair Report – Junger – Negotiations on Fund 128 – Pretty good meeting. We’re going to be looking at that language and Williams can talk about it a little further. The next session will be approving the memo of understanding, unless we end up having another meeting next week.

Madsen – Could you say more about that?

Junger – I don’t want to say too much, but we started off in a strong position, maintained it, actually got language closer to the rights embodied in state statute 36.0.9(5)

Templeton is talking about plans for high speed rail, university recruitment efforts and other things. Had to lean over to talk with reporter. Sorry.

Student Judiciary – First meeting of the next session could be Sunday at Noon. Might not happen if the Vice Chief Justice says it can’t be at that time.

SSFC – We revised the member position description, worked on the MOU with Bazell, worked on RFP for Tenant Services contract. Making sure its abiding by all the legal administrative jargon. When that RFP is out, we have to assemble a pyramid committee to rate proposals, and it would likely be set in effect in September, which is great because its right in rental season (What?). Contract advisory committee will hopefully finish with their recommendations to Biddy before the end of the Fiscal Year.

7:25 – MEChA resolution – Wrote this after realizing MEChA could lose the space they’re occupying since 1972 (not could, WILL.), and there hasn’t been enough communication between UW and MEChA and I thought this would be something important to bring to the awareness of student council. And generally, the only way to have discussion on SC is to do it this way and figure out what to do when their ability to give their direct service is limited. I know there were some concerns that it might not be VPN. I think its our duty, however, to make sure their service can be provided if its been funded.

Templeton: Did you talk to anyone about this lack of communication?

Love: Looked at the DC article, talked to MEChA and they said this.

Templeton: Are you aware that they’ve been talking to MEChA about this for FOUR YEARS?

Love: That might be true, but they’ve not released any press release about this or what’s going on.

Williams: What will this legislation accomplish?

Love: I guess, since this is the last session, this won’t do anything. But I think it raises the discussion on this.

Templeton: Are you aware they have office space at the SAC?

Love: Yes, I’ve been told that, but I’ve been told it limits their ability to aid in their direct service.

Olikara: How would their direct services be limited?

Love: Cultural Arts are limited, archives need to be housed somewhere. They can’t do a lot of these things in the SAC.

Manes: Did you ask if they had alternatives?

Love: Didn’t really discuss that.

Templeton: Do you know if they’re aware about the multipurpose room in the SAC?

Love: Yes, I knew it, but they can do this right now at any point in the day. SAC isn’t open 24-7, MEChA is.

7:33- Operations Grants Approval

Beemsterboer – 91 applications or so, so it’s hard to present this. This is what we got after 16 appeals from student orgs. Final award amount of $145,000.

Gosselin – Could you rehash how Finance Committee made its decisions?

Beemsterboer – We took into consideration – what are the basic operational costs for student orgs. Every student org is going to require membership advertising of sort. The things we generally funded were ads and supplies for fliers, etc. Then we valued was membership dues – are there membership dues they have to pay, and if there are, what costs will members incur, and what is reasonable for the student body to pay. It was based on what the total cost would be per member.

Junger – Remember – this has to be VPN.

Gosselin – Largest five grants?

CWC – 33,100

Bline – 8,000

Pi Kappa Alpha – 4,780

WUD Publications – 5,000

CALS Student Council – 3,900

Gosselin – In the list of orgs that you listed off, can you explain the rationale behind CWC’s budget being five times the size?

Beemsterboer – It’s four times the amount. btw.

Manes – Was there any discussion had on the large number of supply line items for CWC?

Beemsterboer – No.

Manes – One of the things they did not talk about was capital equipment purchases, do you fund the supplies for those?

Beemsterboer – yes.

Debate

Gosselin – First point of information – When Council is looking at this, is it up-down, are there line items, orgs as a whole, etc.

Junger – Can amend by line with majority.

Gosselin – I move to strike 6,050 for printing, 10,000 from supplies, strike 4,393 dollars from ads, 6,000 from equipment from CWC.

Manes seconds.

Gosselin – The numbers as presented: Finance committee went through. There are around 90 or so orgs that recieved funds. Most fell between 500-1200, one reaching as high as 8,000 and then this 33,000 budget. I fear that it appears that Finance Committee may have deviated from the way it approached other groups. 1/4 of ops grant are being doled out to one group. And Op grants are supposed to fund the basics of daily operations. for a group. I have copies for the CWC budget request. I cut printing down to 3,000. The highest printing line item was from bline. Their organization essentially prints a magazine and that’s their cost. So, its clearly the fundamental essence for that organization. I left in all their fliers, but cut their magazine circulation.

Supplies, I cut it down to a level that was still double the nearest group’s line items. Some of these supplies can be conceivably funded by events grants.

Advertising struck to 1607 level – that’s how much homecoming committee received. Still substantial, the largest of any of these organizations.

Equipment – 6,000 was for space rental and phone. I cut it because I don’t know how comfortable I am to pay for space. We pay hundreds of thousands for the SAC, and we were going to fund this?

Basically: This could be a prima facie VPN violation by treating this group differently.

Hanley – What is there total left over? 6,607.

Junger – Please, stay VPN.

Madsen – If we wanted to solicit info from a CWC member, how do we do that while being VPN?

Junger – Can yield the floor to Tina.

Manes – Having dealt quite extensively with CWC, I think this was the result of emotional lobbying, not criteria. I don’t see why this group would have to deal this amount of money. I pulled up the financial policies and proceedures – Mission Statements of Operations Grant – Provides money for routine operations of the student group. We’re not funding centers, etc. We’re funding student organizations. We’re funding what is needed for that student org to exist.

Operations grants won’t be used to fund event oriented funding, major equipment, etc. Events are pertinent here. A lot of the supplies seem to be for more event oriented funding. Its 10,000 condoms to hand out at events. That’s probably something that should go through event grants. A lot of it does seem to fall outside of the daily purview of a student org. Not sure what he’s getting at by emphasizing “Student” organizations. I don’t think this is the place for this discussion, it should go back to finance, seeing as the debate lasted about 15 minutes.

Junger – Rationale for vote needs to be stated.

Madsen – pass.

Max Love – I’m surprised, because the rationale isn’t rationale. I’m surprised you mentioned this, because I’m not sure you witnessed the finance committee debate. Finance Committee did their job and it was passed. So everytime that you’ve said that SSFC should have their autonomy, I can’t believe you come up with your argument. It’s astounding that this is being done right now. The accusations of this VPN, its strange, because lobbying finance committee members can’t happen. Its misleading members of this committee. Try and see this rationally. See where it’s coming from.

Madsen – I’d like to ask the Council for approval for Tina to speak about their supplied. And how it relates to the core of their organizations.

Love – Suspend the rules to ask questions.

Tina – Most of our supplies are condoms, but its our biggest draw to get people to come in. Almost all of the male students that have come in have done so for safe sex supplies. Goes to the direct mission of CWC. Our primary service is resource advising. Most of our things are open to all students on campus. (I’m still in GSSF mode) As for rent and phone – we decided that we cannot do that in the SAC, because of the anonymity of some of our services. Most of the offices and suites have glass windows and we could cover them, but it doesn’t really work.

The printing of our zine, its part of our outreach to the artistic community. Whole subgroup of the campus women’s center. I feel super unprepared. I feel like I was blindsided.

Manes: Would you support an alternative hearing?

Tina: I would say sure, but I think we’re being singled out in a  non-VPN way.

Hanley: When it comes to printing, is that a (the magazine, I assume) service to students to all students directly? Is that available to all students directly?

Tina: Yeah, that’s really a part of our community.

Just a note: I tend to agree with Manes – this isn’t the place to be doing this. Send it back to finance committee.

Hanley: What’s the purpose of the ads, national pen?

Tina: National Pen produces our promotional materials, and the Herald and Cardinal would be advertising the center as a whole.

Ziebell: I know you said that you work with other departments for the Redzine. Uh….Pass on that. Netflix subscription?

Tina: Yeah, we don’t have it right now, but we thought it’d be good for our discussions and we wouldn’t have to pay 1,000 a time to show something.

Ziebell: On the other question – Do the other groups get funding from ASM to print those redzines?

Tina: Don’t really know, we have co-sponsorships, CWC contributes a certain amount of money.

Beemsterboer: Why not SAC space?

Tina: More anonymous. Sure, other similar groups are here, but there’s a need for a separate center for this.

I don’t know if the Memorial Union space was that more anonymous. I mean, it was a clear line of sight to the door. The SAC space does have odd angles and corners and a myriad more locations that one could duck into. Certainly, you could argue the windows are a problem, but you can fix that.

Tina: It’s a safe bet. We’re a former GSSF group. This is less than a 1/3 of our former budget.

Martenzie Johnson: If you don’t get the space funding, would you cease to exist.

Tina: I don’t want to misrepresent them.

Love: Do you know if they lobbied Finance?

Tina: No.

Love: Why not?

Tina: We were told it was frowned upon, or illegal. I don’t quite know.

Madsen: Is the ad budget used for events?

Tina: It used to be when we had a bigger budget, but it might do so with our kickoff meetings, etc.

Madsen: Do your funds actually go to events, or services, etc.

Tina: I can speak to this, all the event line items were stripped for this budget. Most of the supplies were the bare basics. We have a lot of active members, so that’s why there is so much.

Gosselin: Pass.

Manes: No other student orgs that we fund here put on services. These are funds for the student orgs to exist. No other groups were funded for rent.

Madsen: POI – weren’t some other groups given funds for rent?

Beemsterboer: That was for Badger Ballroom, rental funds for dancing space.

Manes: Can you segregate your student org from the services you provide?

Tina: What is an organization for? Just to exist and talk? These services are what we do to exist! Can you give an example of an org that exist but doesn’t do anything?

Manes: Well, it’s not often that this happens. CFACT lost their GSSF status. They do internships, they do campaigning, they did other direct services…but they were able to separate the cost associated from those services from those to just run the organizations.

Tina: So, separate the costs of operating from these services? The mission IS our services. If we cut all the services, we would still be doing resource advising. We give them stuff, we get people who call the phone line when they’re in crisis. I don’t think I can answer this question. and also, it’s really hard to do this on the fly. I’m only in charge of about a 1/9 of the org.

Manes: You said that none of the CWC members have lobbied Finance Committee members. You personally lobbied with Tim Fund during GSSF funds.

Tina: Yeah! For GSSF!

Manes: Yes, but it was Tim Fung who moved to fund… (Laughter from Max Love.)

Tina: I’m sorry, I should have clarified.

Manes: But how can you say you didn’t lobby when you did lobby for a Finance Committee member?

Tina: I’m sure anyone who was on both committees would have a different understanding. How can we be punished for doing what we were supposed to SSFC and Finance? If it’s allowed in the bylaws, its allowed in the bylaws.

Bemis: Can you give an estimate to how many students use the support groups?

Tina: We don’t take names, obviously.

Junger: Motion to close the speakers list for questions. No objection (Max objects but not loud enough. Moving on.)

Olikara: Did CWC engage in the rearrangement process for Red Gym? Did anyone look into that?

Tina: I personally don’t know.

(Sorry, missed a bit fielding e-mails about interviews and controversial ads. HOW FUN!)

Madsen: This is an all student group, right?

Tina: Yes, it’s all student run, no professional staff or advisers.

Move more to debate, back in rules.

Beemsterboer: Motion to add 562 to printing, 863 to supplies, 1,374 to ads, and 400 to equipment rental.

Templeton: Lobbying needs to be public, right?

Junger: Yes.

Templeton: Make that clear to Bemis,then, who’s talking to Tina.

Beemsterboer: Nobody has asked if I was comfortable with the Finance Committee debate, I was not, I think it was a prima facie violation as Kurt said. There are a lot of justifiable items in this original grant, but not to the level we funded.

(Speaks to rationale for why he wants to increase grants from Kurt’s number. Says a lot of the supplies are unnecessary, the space IS necessary, given the SAC space allocation having passed.)

Williams – If you have lobbied with any orgs, even in small amounts, please fill out the forms, because otherwise you can be removed.

Madsen: Speaking to the second – I think its important respect his opinion and information as to how he acts. I think its important to have the space. If for nothing else, the support groups. Condoms are necessary to draw people in. Might be worth still talking about where the supplies money should be.

Love: I just want to say, I don’t support the amendment because just because a group is getting an atypical amount doesn’t mean its a violation. I can’t find one thing that is being funded here that it can’t be funded. Says event oriented funding  isn’t being funded. I can’t see why we won’t fund CWC to the request they ask. For us not to ask that about every single group, we’re violating VPN then. And this isn’t a VPN hearing. If people have concerns about this being too large, you can’t argue that. That’s not logical reasoning. I’ve disagreed with both the amendments.

Can’t is a lot different from “should” based on what is fiscally responsible and necessary for the group. I wrote an article about this once, and I think Love is taking that position, but I’ve changed my mind on that since then. I’ll post it if I find it.

Gosselin: I’m not sure if you need to read an Econ book or Southworth first. The idea that there’s a scarcity of resources aside, the reason I moved to look at this is because it is substantially greater. I think that might be a sign of VPN violation.

Willing to concede certain points, might have to pull a Wiley on the space funding, but some of this is fiscal insanity.

Manes: Really agree with Gosselin. We don’t have the expertise to go through this line by line. We are here to be a check on Finance Committee. We sit here for a reason, so that those things don’t just happen as an anomaly. There seems to be lobbying here and they happened to get the largest operations grant in history. But looking through the changes that Beemsterboer made, they’re reasonable. It’s difficult to separate an organization from its services, but its something that has to be done. And they no longer have privileges that a GSSF group would enjoy. I support these cuts at these levels. Call the question.

Amendment to amendment (Beemsterboer’s) – New total 14,806 dollars.

Carries.

Templeton: Call the question on original amendment.

Defeated. Return to speakers list.

Manes: supports rent increase. Chancellor Wiley, when dealing with WISPIRG, granted them an exemption for one year to continue to receive funding (Remember to fill out that lobbying form, Max. I saw that.) I feel the same way about CWC. They’re going to have to provide alternatives next time they come before SSFC.

Ziebell: Speaks to support of this. (Max Love just showed me his form. Thank you. Puts my mind at ease)

Bemis: Don’t support change in supply line for change after lobbying. Looking at the CWC website, there are certain things that happen too regularly to get event grants.

Love: I’d like to address, Kurt – just because they’re receiving 1/4 of the operations grant doesn’t mean its wrong. I looked at different orgs receiving rental funding -

Risk Management and Insurance Society – 1,000 for room rentals

Wisconsin Singers – nothing. whoops.

Hoofers Riding Club – Porta Potty rental, 1750 for entire space rental.

Yoga – 300 equipment rental.

Kappa Alpha Psi  - 400 for campus events

UW Kennel Club is getting nothing.

Decca is getting something…

This, so far, is mostly equipment and rental space for events. CWC wants permanent housing.

Gymnastics Club – money for workout environment.

Hypnotic – dance studio rental.

Habitat for Humanity – West High School rental space.

(Tell you what, I’m going to cut this off here and post all the details of his rent comparisons here tomorrow.)

Motion to yield remaining time to CWC to explain the rent necessity. Fails.

Madsen – There needs to be a good conversation about scarcity of resources, and for that to come back to council and have that happen, that’s not unreasonable. I’m going to make a motion to increase the supplies line for 1,740 for 3,000 packs of whistles and lube, which, of course, goes hand in hand with condoms

I disagree, actually – doesn’t lube break down the effectiveness of condoms? Still, whatever. It’s in the supply pack, right? Doesn’t make sense to short people their lube. That’s inequity, fools.

Call to question on amendment to amendment.

Fails.

9:06 – Beemsterboer – All of the space equipment rentals are for temporary uses of space, except for Hoofers Riding Club. Only got funded half of what they requested.

I could point out half of these line items and why they are not needed for basic operations. If you have events, ask for events grants, not backdoor through the ops grant. Because they claim tooffer a service shouldn’t be taken into considerations. We’re not talking about funding their services.

We just heard from one organization at the beginning of the meeting that can’t function with 2,800, and are now debating one that claims the amount given isn’t enough to do all their programs. Call the question.

CWC passes at 15k or so.

Back on total ops grant.

Gosselin: Maybe we should give the money back to finance, but I don’t want to let that 10k just sit idle.

Beemsterboer – Motion to add 2,800 in membership dues for National Society of Leadership and Success.

I understand the appeals process may be rather difficult. I can sympathize with their appeal.

Ziebell – If they can’t function, that’ll be open SAC space, and given our problems with allocation, that’ll cause problems.

Call to question: Passes.

Beemsterboer: Refer the rest of the ops grants left over (about 14.5 k) [EDIT] Finance committee, as long as it cannot go to CWC.

Gosselin – Extend prohibition to the other group we just gave funds to.

Call to questions. All pass.

Motion to adjourn.

We’re done at 9:17!

A note to anonymous/aliased commenters

As you can see in the wonderful cluster of problems that was yesterday’s commenting thread, “Impartial Student” is not who he seems to be and  would like you to believe that. While I usually enjoy the free and anonymous trade of ideas, I don’t appreciate it when people try to play clever games with me or the audience. So when I found out who this comment was attributed to, I was rather miffed:

What about Melissa Hanley for Chair?

Also Max Love is an idiot; that resolution just breaths violation of VPN.

I’m miffed because the person who left that comment WAS Max Love, apparently trying to convince us that he’s not him. What better way than to insult himself!

Well, the IP address accords in the rest of his comments (not the initial one), as does his e-mail address, which I found linked (through a google search) to  a forum for an online military combat game that he must have played back in 2006. I won’t link to it, because there’s no need to actually reveal what e-mail he was using, but the point of this revelation is this:

If you choose to be anonymous on this blog, do not attempt to convince people you are not who you are. Do not misrepresent someone else. Don’t fool my audience.

And if you do — use an e-mail that I can’t trace back to you. Biased Student certainly caught on.

Max, if transparency is paramount to you, then you should either post with your own name or try not to point the finger first.

–

In other news, I may attend Student Council tonight — I have the night off and I haven’t been able to go in awhile. Live blog time?

ASM/UW Roundup

Let’s start off on the right foot:

-Gosselin has an election wrap-up and needless number crunching, as he was happy to point out in the comments. As stated before, the turnout was huge, but so was the incumbency factor — Junger, Williams (although he was appointed before, not elected), Manes, Ziebell, Zinn, Templeton, Hanley (also appointed), Beemsterboer, Ingrahm (assuming he accepts), Madsen, Deichl (appointed as well, right?).  I’m not sure if that will matter in the end, but it certainly is interesting.

As for chair and vice chair — the obvious choices are Templeton and Zinn for chair. Williams might also be an option given his stewardship of SSFC and greater involvement in the tenant resources contract, as well as ASM issues in general. Templeton would hardly be objectionable as chair (as I think he did a lot of the behind the scenes grunt work, such as his work with the UC/Student Reps merger), but Williams might have his detractors because of everything that surrounded the CWC saga and disgruntlement with the strict nature of SSFC in general.

Zinn makes sense on paper (Academic Affairs is going swimmingly for the most part), but he’s seen as fairly stubborn on Student Council. For what it’s worth, in an interview before the elections, he said he thought his objections were principled stands against what he saw as self-serving SC measures such as increasing the stipends for the chairs. He likely doesn’t have the votes to make that work, though.

Whatever happens, let’s make it clear: This is not a Junger/Benford situation where neither had direct experience on SC — We have three incumbents with very clearly outlined resumes and methods. Williams vs. Zinn might be a bit closer, but Templeton vs. Zinn would seem to be heavily in Templeton’s favor. Furthermore, MPOWER doesn’t have the votes to simply give it to Zinn. 11 MPOWER members on paper, perhaps one or two more in the grad school. On a body of 33, 12-13 isn’t going to cut it. The only reason is did last year was because key votes didn’t show up until later — I think it was a 13-13 deadlocked vote? And I’d be surprised if ANYONE misses the first meeting. If they are, I’ll be sure to call them out.

-MEChA is still having problems with their space. Obviously, they wanted a suite in the SAC, but that didn’t end up happening. I’ll be trying to follow up on this more after talking to some people from UW and MEChA, but there has to be a place for them. The story says they were offered space in the Red Gym, but turned it down. Max Love has a resolution he’s bringing up at Student Council to…well…I’m not really sure what this is supposed to do other than offer support.

In the discussion over the proposed site for the new UW-Madison Music School, the University has largely ignored the student organization Movimiento Estudiantil Chican@ de Aztlan.

There has been no initiative to compensate the organization with an autonomous space much like the space it occupies now. The organization has been in this space since 1972. The university has not been in contact with the organization throughout the public property debate and anything they know regarding their office location’s status is through word of mouth.

Because the location serves as a direct dispenser of M.E.Ch.A’s direct service, and because relocating to the SAC would limit M.E.Ch.A’s ability to provide CulturArte, Student Council has an obligation to raise questions about the fate of M.E.Ch.A’s space.

Be it resolved, that ASM Student Council supports truthful discussions about the future of an autonomous space for M.E.Ch.A. so they can distribute their direct service.

Listen, I find it hard to believe that they weren’t told anything before a last minute “By the way, you’re out” but I agree with Love that it’s worth looking into. I’m just wondering how a SC resolution will solve this. It should say something about how SC resolves to help MEChA find space so it can continue providing services, not that it supports a discussion. With SAC space, obviously, you can’t go out of your way to give them space because it wouldn’t be VPN (although, they’re going to appeal their space decision given the small amount), but there should be some way of finding them extra space for their archives and CulturArte program. I’ll let you know what else I find out.

-Leg Affairs drops plans to bring Gov. candidates here this semester, and talks the Yahara/Monona Terrace/Dane County Airport/Kohl Center possibilities for High Speed rail. We’ve seen Johnson and Williams’ thoughts on this, I only ask — where you at Paulson? Thoughts? FYI: They also discussed what to do with our lovely Alcohol License Density Ordinance once the sunset provision kicks in. This should be ASM’s prime concern on a city level when it comes up — they were very much against it back in 06, will they be as adamant this time around? I’m sure the city will trot out some crime statistics to back up ALDO, but I wonder what the economic impacts are?

-And once again, for those who missed it in the last post — Final numbers from NatUP campaign: 39,000 – 30,700 on the website, renderings, powerpoint and another 8,000 or so on shirts, banners, etc. How fun! The Ed Board doesn’t like it.

NatUP’s “sour grapes”

I received this letter last week from someone. I can’t say who they are because they refused to let them use their name, but I also refused to let them have the letter printed in the Herald. I wasn’t going to print it here, but then I saw they published the entire letter as a rambling blog post on Muckrakers (people still use that thing?) so all bets are off.

Let me just acknowledge that I am incredibly impressed with the voter turnout, despite the outcome. Not to mention I do pay for my education.

Earlier this week, the students had a chance to improve The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s recreational facilities for future generations, and it failed. Why you ask? Because of our biased media, student government and the lies going around from No New Seg Fees. Every other election, the Herald has published side by side opinion articles (and stated facts), except for this campaign. Students were not well informed about this issue. If they would have known the Nat WILL NOT be built without an increase in segregated fees, and construction costs are at an all time low making it a better investment for our future, the outcome would have been different.

I think the majority of students understood that was a possibility. Yes, the student body may not get a shiny new facility without increasing segregated fees, but its a matter of whether they willfully want to raise their segregated fees or that of their future classmates.

I watched the No New Seg Fee’s immature tactics first hand. STUDENTS: we let a bunch of TA’s tell us how to vote and ignored a decade worth of complaints. In a recent article No New Seg Fees representative Peter Rickman said “the allegations sound like “sour grapes.” He said No New Seg Fees did not need to resort to lies to perpetuate their message and NatUP 2010 never confronted the group with those allegations.” Is this a joke? It’s quite funny because I watched your group mess with NatUp signs and chalking, not to mention I had to correct many people in my classes about the lies coming from your group. How does it feel to win because of the lies you told? You should be humiliated knowing how far behind you just put our campus, its going to cost students a lot more in the future.

I’m sorry, but this is a university, not a high school. When you put kids in K-12, you give them physical education because it’s been decided over time that you’re not just teaching them the basic academics, but trying to make them a well-rounded individual. Once you get to college, that’s your responsibility. Because of that, it’s the student’s responsibility to decide their exercise patterns, workout routines and emphasis on that sort of physical self-education.

Guess what? They either don’t want to do that or don’t need a shiny new building to accomplish that. This is only going to cost students more if they assume this project will happen on the backs of students regardless. And if you think they’re going to approve this after the massive failure of NatUP and the multiple blitz campaigns of the Wisconsin Union, you’re misjudging the dissatisfaction with even modest increases in tuition and fees.

If more students went to the debate, you would have seen how professional NatUp was. No New Seg Fees were clearly unprepared and showed disrespect during the entire debate and even quoting movie lines as a joke. Also if you would have been at this debate you would have known, the University can not and will not fund this project.

Let’s be fair — No New Seg Fees didn’t run a very well informed campaign. The letters written on behalf of the group to the Herald (Frank Honts comes to mind) missed certain key facts and that annoyed me a bit. It also annoyed me at the debate that one of the members didn’t really seem to be taking it all too seriously. For what its worth, Rickman and others in the TAA should be mildly ashamed for not making sure their facts were airtight.

That being said, I don’t think the news section got anything wrong. Yeah, they probably didn’t like the article on their spending of 30,000, but hey, neither did the rest of the campus when they saw it. Oh, and by the way, courtesy of an open records request from Kevin Bargnes, the actual total is about $39,000, itemized here.

No New Seg Fees asks: how can we spend money on a new gym when education funding is limited? This question is just a scare tactic, and our education funding is an entirely separate issue (which was also explained during the debate). Segregated fees and an increase in tuition are two separate arguments, but No New Seg Fees ensured this distinction was blury. NatUp was created to improve our facilities by the students for the students, not involving the University’s educational funding at all. But No New Seg Fees made a lot of people think otherwise.

A Herald reporter finally got it right, Kevin Bargnes said, “By the mid 2020s, students could be paying well over $220 a year for exercise facilities — probably more like $300-$400 given the fact that the SERF won’t be cheap.” If an article like this would have been published before the vote, maybe students would have a better opinion, instead the Herald stuck to negative, biased opinion articles. The Herald should be ashamed of the way they presented this campaigns information, and now students have to pay for it and they will for many years to come. Bargnes calls himself a “muckraker” even when his articles are corrected by truthful comments, and then he uses those comments in other articles, way to do your research buddy, you really messed up this time.

Uh. Here’s the deal, NatUP — just because they are segregated fees, doesn’t mean the money for a new Nat and tuition don’t come from the same pocket. As for the Bargnes critique — I’d like to point out that NatUP members tried to claim that nothing is being done to the SERF after the Nat — which is just not true. So, while we’re talking about lies, let’s keep that in mind.

Why didn’t No New Seg Fees propose an alternative funding option? They certainly failed to tell people NatUp was seeking private donations, and would have continued to if the referendum passed. Did your group not understand that it would be a MAXIMUM of $54 per semester, because alternative options were still being looked at. To make it clear, the state can only contribute to the educational purposes of the Nat, but No New Seg Fees failed again to get that message across.

Let this be known, our $60 million building today will cost over $100 million in the future because construction costs will continue to rise. Not to mention, we all pay $53 in segregated fees for an ASM bus pass that a lot of us don’t use. Also, there’s going to be new Lakeshore dorms going up. State of the art facilities keeps Madison on top, and will make us look much better as alumni. Next time you go and visit another university (especially those in state) make sure to check out their recreational facilities, and you just might vote differently next time. Lets just go back to avoiding our recreational facilities when tours are given for potential incoming students, we’re all embarrassed.

I don’t really have any breath left to address them. I’m just surprised the author of that comment wouldn’t allow her comment to be published. I sent an e-mail asking why she wanted to be anonymous. The answer?:

Hi Jason, thank you for your response. I just want to fun [sic] my letter to the editor, not start any controversy with TA’s, however I was one of many students who received a lecture from their TA’s before class. Not to mention my friend has over 9 e-mails from her TA telling their class to vote NO. How are we suppose to stand up to that? I’d rather protect my grade. I have no problem discussing the letter to the editor with you on the phone. Thank you.

My number is in the signature, but I never got a call. Oh well.

NatDOWN, MPOWER gets 10 seats, Union South is Union South

Amazing really. The turnout was 34.5 percent of campus. That’s by far the largest turnout ever. The referendums on Union South went into about 18 percent or so before being invalidated, but the only one after that was last year’s ASM Constitution referendum. That was 15 percent.

Frankly, the repudiation of NatUP is stunning.  8,354 to 5311, essentially 60-40. No worry about that.

In addition, Adam Johnson and Tina Trevino-Murphy did not make the cut. Very surprising, but I guess someone has to miss the mark. Zinn makes it as does Johnson’s deputy Woolwich.

More on this as I get time to write.

ASM stipends and political mudslinging

As you’ve no doubt seen by now, there’s a potential bylaw violation on the table via Max Love.

This is loaded with all sorts of political implications and I think  I owe it to everyone involved to be as transparent as how this story came about. As transparent, that is, as a few off the record comments will allow me. So to be clear — here’s what was on the record and can help explain this mess.

On Sunday night, I went to meet with the MPOWER candidates for the purposes of posting some of their statements here. There’s enough in there to dedicate to a future post (and by future, I mean in an hour) and I intend to do so.

In any case, I sat down with a few people — Tina Trevino Murphy, Evan Hurley (who is helping them organize?), Peter Lorenz, Zach Ivins, Ace Hillard, Jasmine Savoy, Dakota Alcantara-Camacho, Beth Huang and a couple of other people who popped in. The conversation went well, although it was very obvious that Tina was the spokesperson of the group and was advising people on what could be said on or off the record. While the control was a bit annoying, the individual candidates were refreshing — I would cite Jasmine Savoy as being particularly well-equipped to jump into the ASM fray.  Oh, and Sam Stevenson, but that’s just because we even endorsed him as a member of FACES. He’s leftist, yes, but he’s far more reasonable than most I know.

In any case, at the end of our meeting, I started interviewing candidates individually. Before I pulled aside Ace, Tina and Evan turned to me and told me to come back to them after I’m done because “we might have a story for you.” That’s fine. I’ll take stories from any group, as long as it has merit.

After meeting with Ace, Max Love came to the MPOWER table and started getting his laptop out and searching for a few things. He asked if he could talk to me about something. He then pulled me over and showed me the stipend bylaws and started explaining that he had been looking through the bylaws and found that Junger and Williams seemed to be in violation and should be removed immediately. I told him I’d look into it and went back to interviews. Later on that night, when I interviewed Tina, I asked if the news they were going to forward was what Love told me. She said yes and we moved on.

Yesterday, I told Adelaide about it and told her to look into it. If there’s merit to the allegations, run a story. If not, then don’t run anything. Despite the arguments by Max that this was only Max doing this and an e-mail he sent me saying exactly the same thing — emphasizing that he didn’t want this to be a smear campaign — the connection to MPOWER is hard to argue against. Sure, the slate isn’t working toward this bylaw issue, but the guy helping with publicity and the defacto spokesperson are certainly involved. You can argue its now connected to MPOWER, but that’s the problem with slates — you sign on to the platform and, despite any differences you have, inherit the brand. You take that good and the bad. So when two point people for the slate do this, it reflects on the slate.

Anyway, she looked at the bylaws, realizes there is something here and calls Junger to get some comment. Then Junger comments to the fact that it seems like they all made a big oversight — SSFC, SC, Financial staff, etc. At that point, we decide to run the story because it does seem like something has gone wrong here. Not a front page story, of course, because it doesn’t actually merit that high of a placement. It’s news, but it’s not HUGE news.

From there, I tell Adelaide to call Max Love because of the fact that this obviously came from him. She has him guide her through the bylaws to have him explain it from his perspective, then attempts to get him to comment on it given the fact that he’s going to bring this forward. Love makes his comment that he didn’t want to do this until after the election (which he told me as well) and Adelaide tells him that it will be running tomorrow regardless.

Max was very upset and for good reason. In the middle of Adelaide and myself trying to figure out a good way to run this while not giving anyone political cover, I met with Tom Templeton for the post you saw yesterday on this page. In the middle of that interview, I got a call from Tina Trevino Murphy. She asked first about the story and if it was going out as is. I told her it was and used the political cover rationale. She then told me they’d be coming out with the complaint that night.

I can only assume that our story forced Love and Trevino-Murphy’s hand. I’m sure that if we had spiked the story, it would have stayed under the radar until after the election.

In any case, we wrote what we had from Junger, Williams, Love and later Gosselin, who spoke as legal counsel. We also asked for documents from the minutes, which Williams said he could not get us that night. I’ll see if I can get them today and post them to explain this a little clearer and point out the specific votes being cited here.

In any case, we waited until about 1 a.m. for the complaint. Here is is. As you can see, it doesn’t do the best job of laying out the facts of the case. This is because it was rushed along hastily as a result of the report we were going to file. I doubt this goes anywhere because of the lack of information laid out here, but even if it did — you have about two weeks left in SC tenures. What’s the point?

I’m sure accountability is one. But even then, why not and why push for immediate removal? What does that help? Does that teach people a lesson?

Whatever the rationale given, this has a far greater political impact on the leadership process and they know that. You’d have to be stupid not to. Now, I’m sure Max Love would even admit that this reflects on the people running that they’ve been talking about bylaws regarding stipends for a few weeks now and for them not to notice this speaks to their job performance.

It speaks to the inherently flawed structure of the bylaws, which is why they’re going to revise them next year. To assume that this was a money grab is quite a stretch in my opinion.

As for the validity — it seems like Brandon Williams would be out of compliance on a technicality, but the spirit of the first exemption is obvious. Templeton seems pretty off the hook as he wasn’t a member when the initial vote came through on the internal budget. They reopened it for the tenant ratings website and voted again. Paulson indicates this could be the case. Gosselin? Don’t know. Need to see how he voted or if he did vote at all, since there was a period of him serving as chair where he wouldn’t have voted on it anyway. Junger seems to be implicated as he did vote on the increase for the chair and might have voted for the internal budget as well.

The issue — some unanswered questions on who made mistakes and very little point to make an issue of this other than to point the finger.

I can’t tell you how pissed off I am that this is how the election is going AGAIN this year. I’m already hearing accusations on the other side too which, I’m sure we’ll have to examine as well. But if this is the sort of thing that’s going on now, imagine what’s going to happen when the next council meets. Sides and slates have always been an impediment to progress, unless a slate wins all the seats. Which I’ve been told only happened once in the late 90s.

With all this infighting, it almost makes me wish I had run. I suppose I’m a grad student, so I still could given the relatively low threshold for write ins, if I quit the Herald.

But then again, I love the Herald.

If anyone has any information or complaints to add to this post, sound off. But its a messy situation that really didn’t have to happen. A real shame.

Hearing from the candidates #5 – Tom Templeton

I think that next year moving forward, I’ve been working a lot with the Greeks and there’s a lot I want to touch on — campus safety has been one. Lighting initiatives, more campus buses – we’re in a renegotiation year for SAFE Bus – there’s also been discussions about refunding SAFEcab. Its a bit short sighted, not a comprehensive enough plan for safety issues. But there are some legitimate concerns with the cuts but I think that they’ve been kind of answers. The committee that cut said we’ll work with you when we cut it.

Worked this year on MIU with Chancellor Martin – getting the student oversight board and the oversight board student appointees was big. About 6 million left in allocations for curricular development and faculty hires. Calls for proposals again, we’ll go through that again. We’re working to maintain the student input and interest issues. Another issue on MIU we’ve not been talking about alot is the pledge to raise 20 mil for financial aid. I think ASM can partner with UW foundation to find donors to increase our financial aid. That along with working with state and local legislators and push for certain bills and student initiatives overarches a reinvestment in higher education campaign. We need legislators to understand that we’re concerned, invested in the higher ed issues. That ties into a bigger issue of the three rs: Recruitment retention and reputation. What can we do to recruit and retain the best students and make sure that they have a great reputation nationally and internationally. We were able to get two students appointed to the search and screen for the admissions director. Then looking campuswide to see initiative wide what we can do to aid that. Important to remember faculty too – when we pushed for domestic partnership benefits, that was a big thing. MIU is really helping for recruitment and hopefully it will help with retention too. I think that there’s some movement possible in the rankings if we focus on that. I think that staying true to student issues – expanding shared gov, providing student services, etc. —  but advocating for students in DC and at the capitol.

I’m not overly invovled with the financial allocation side, I think there’s opportunities for SC to weigh in with that. I think SSFC needs to weigh in on that. I think staying as VPN as I can, I don’t want to see student groups not be funded. I think it’s pretty clear how to get GSSF funding. I think there are finance grants and operations grants. I think you have to be cognizant of fiscal responsibility. The no new seg fee campaign — it sounds sexy, but you can’t say that and say “we want to fund this and this and this as well.” We want to fund services that provide the best value for campus as well.

SC failure?

I think that there’s definitely points we can point to. Structurally its in error of how we’re structure. We saw this year SC liking to pass resolutions or endorsements — there’s no real action or follow-up on it. That’s part of the fault of SC not asking for writing for any action. Plus we don’t have anyone to follow up.

I would agree with Johnson’s assessment. You run into the problem of SC with a clash of really involved members and some strictly just ASM SC members who don’t read the agenda, etc. That’s been a philosophical question of what SC is supposed to do. Its about setting policy for representing students. And I think that good communication and cross communication is key to that — can’t really say that has happened this year. I think in this year, as opposed to past years, we’ve made great strides in that whereas past sessions have failed.

The elected reps should really be coming up with the ideas of what the campaigns are and getting them done. We set some policies this year. For example, we set a bylaw saying that intern projects had to be approved by student council. We need to decide where our resources are being placed. Adam Johnson has a point. In theory, every SC member has to attend a committee. We tried to put in more accountability policies and it failed. Certain members of SC thought some requirements we tried to institute were too strict. Need to mandate where council was happening. And also directing leaders. I think that if the representative in engineering saying there’s a certain issue that we should be addressing, he should write something up and push it forward.

Approved some through the intern bylaw – I can’t recall what they were specifically. We pushed forward a committee on work-study programs. Tyler wrote his report for the Fund 128. Sometimes its just a stamp from SC on committee initiatives. Our resources are limited and we should be able to say here’s where we need to spend our time and money. I would put emphasis into the safety issues, textbook swap, legislator lobbying and coming up with a way of coming to SC, going back to their constituents and speaking to them.

SACGB – I think Katy has been great and moved a lot of stuff forward and admitted her faults where they needed to be. Philosophically for myself, the way the SACGB is set up is that VC is set there. The initial idea behind it was to have someone really dedicated to the process somehow involved in it. Do I think its necessary for VC to be there? I don’t know know if its fully necessary. Could be another SC member. I wasn’t able to be in attendance and I had different events for my VC duties, so I wasn’t there to be at the first allocation interviews. Wasn’t there when the initial VPN violations were brought up. When it was brought to my attention that they had solved the issue, that was the meeting I was sitting at. Williams had brought up that they might be violating VPN. I was also told I wasn’t allowed to vote and said that if we’ve been warned and I can see lawsuits, I removed myself. To show how serious I was about what I thought they were getting themselves into. The rest of the proceedings made it through without any grave errors. I don’t think  any real big issues. I think that was by and large issues. There’s talk of moving it under SSFC for that reasons. There’s no check. SACGB thinks it shouldn’t be under SSFC. They think they have the same level of power as SSFC does. So I think they’re misguided in that view.

SC bylaws allow SC to move it. It would be taking the oversight of the allocations process and putting the check — which currently doesn’t exist — and allowing SSFC to approve or reject the allocation process. Majority of SACGB thought SC should be the check.

Meeting the candidates #4 – Adam Johnson

Adam Johnson is the current Chair of Legislative Affairs. I asked him a few questions about his candidacy.

[N.B.: The notes below are not verbatim quotes, but my summary of his answers. I was writing them down as he said them, so they're as summary specific as possible.]

1. Given your work this year on Leg Affairs, what do you want to accomplish in another year in ASM?

First and foremost, a lot of the work is a continuation of the stuff I’ve done next year. Biggest things I want to work on as a personal project was a Big 10 legislative caucus. Having a coferencewide institution to plan a comprehensive leg. platform but with Milwaukee not in the council we don’t have any peer institutions. Being more involved in the other Big 10 schools. By teaming up with other Big 10 schools and forming the most prestigious conference in the country we have a lot more leverage in Congress. USSA has a different focus is too costly, but this is free except for travel costs. We get to the frame the debate, it won’t be like USSA with staff framing it. This is a campus level collaborative. Plan on having a more formalized proposal up before the end of the semester. Get the other govs in the Big 10 to sign on and have a conference and work right away.

I want to follow through with some of the campaigns I’ve started in Leg Affairs, obviously campus safety is a priority – doing stuff on Langdon, have Tom Templeton work with the fraternities. Get that done. Additionally, I want to keep working on increasing relations between ASM and the city, I think the strides we’ve taken this year have been good but there’s always room for improvement. We gained respect but we keep the respect if we continue to be engaged at all levels of government – especially high speed transit. Hard to make it sexy, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look at it.

One of the last big points that I had was I want to continue with some campaigns that were starting right now — Gubenatorial candidates to campus – bring them to the general student body, need an open — Kyle Woolwich [ASM Leg Affairs VC] was working on this, he’s calling Tom Barrett right now, but that is something we have to obviously see about depending how this election pans out. In addition to that I’ve been working with Brandon Williams on the Tenant Services – close to UW purchasing to get request for bids placed out there. Then we can focus on these student housing fairs here. Focus on improving renting for all students and that’s something we see has been really lacking, Margret Brown of Steve Brown and Jim Stopple of MPM has been focused on how to make this a better experience.

What exactly were you looking to do with safety?

The Lighting Ordinance was what I was specifically working on – met with the captain of the downtown area (Mary Schauf) we’ve discussed trouble areas, programs to increase awareness of where they might be vulnerable, because prevention is obviously the easiest way to stay safe. Increasing police routes in different areas based upon crime density maps. State Street has beeen under fire for a couple of incidents — they’re adjusting their routes to help address this – I’ve got a fairly narrowly focused mandate.

Is there any merit to MPOWER arguments that SAFEcab needs to have some funding restored?

SAFE cab – I think that the arguments brought up by SSFC VC Romenesko and the reasons why it was cut down to the level it was now really tell a lot about it and it was a decision based upon what constitutes abuse and what constitutes actual safety needs. The 150 people this would have effective were not using it for safety reasons but convenience reasons. The way in which we can reduce fees – offsetting the cost of the seg fee sweep. It would be a far cry from no new seg fees . Everyone has a bus pass, safe buses run pretty late. I can see how we could expand the safebus program – 80 is empty all the time. I really don’t think the way we should restore.funding is for student convenience. I have a hard time thinking about a special situation where you need it more than [6 times a semester]. They’re also willing to work with special circumstances. The students who have gone over the limit and really need it, there IS an option about that. Only a few have inquired about this.

When you look at a service that effects every student on campus, I guess I would argue that an increase of $4 for every student on campus is too much, especially when the students who need the service will not get turned down. Its simply irresponsible to pay that amount for situations where they don’t want to walk home. I’ve certainly had friends like that. That’s the sort of behavior we don’t want to encourage. It is a balance between how much were spending and while the numbers themselves aren’t that much…yeah, but that’s only one tiny portion of our budget. If we applied that every safe program, it would go up considerably.

Is there anything specific to SC that you think they’ve done well? Anything they’ve dropped the ball on?

One of the things, there’s been a lot of criticism about SC looking at their bylaws, I think there probably needs to be more discussion about what goes on in our committees, committees should be where we do the work and SC is where we should be discussing what we’re doing. A lot of times the chair reports are merely an afterthought and people just want to get through them. We absolutely need to look at the bylaws, because it makes us a more effective committee. We have recognized that ASM has structural weaknesses and they’re not going to go away by ignoring them. We have had a weakness in using SC as a vessel for the committee work and fostering it.

Hearing from the candidates #3: Cale Planmann

Cale is a law student and former legal adviser to CWC. He is running against Randall Melchert and Ajit Iyer. He is also a member of MPOWER.

> 1. What prompted you to run for Student Council in the first place?

I’ve been interested in ASM for a while and was going to run last year, but as I wasn’t a law student yet I could not run (which was frustrating).  I just like the idea of leaving the campus community a little better off than when I entered.
> 2. What do you know about Student Council? What is your impression of
> it?

Honestly I think that Student Council has been doing a pretty decent job so far.  Obviously there are huge visibility issues, but at some point I think you have to accept the fact that unless there is a crisis students are not going to get hugely invested in something as mundane or boring as student government.  Honestly, I consider Student Council’s relatively low profile so far a good thing because it means that the machine is (mostly) working.

> 3. What is something ASM has dropped the ball on in recent years? What
> is something it has succeeded at?

The entire SACGB process left a bad taste in my mouth.  I did some work with SLAC and the Working Class Student Union, and the process was broken.  The second time around it was broken in the WCSU’s favor so I kept my mouth shut, but there needs to be some major revisions.  On the same token, the entire Campus Women’s Center appeal process demonstrated how broken the ASM bylaws are.  I feel that if the bylaws were properly written 1) the entire situation could have been solved by mistakes being admitted and revised numbers being accepted and 2) there would not have been enough procedural loopholes and inconsistencies in the bylaw to let a troublemaker keep the process alive.

Additionally, I have some major problems with the Student Judiciary and especially the election commission.  I feel that they have been vastly overstepping their bounds recently (changing rules mid election, reapportioning seats without Student Council consent, etc) and I think that proper Student Council action is needed to reign them in.

As for good things, I do think ASM is moving in the right direction with regards to accessibility.  Additionally I think that the SSFC has been doing a pretty good job keeping fees low (although I think they should have more power to audit the numbers groups submit to them).
> 4. Do you belong to any student organizations on campus?

I am affiliated with Law Students for Reproductive Justice and the National Lawyers Guild.  I have done some work with the Campus Women’s Center, SLAC, and the WCSU but I do not consider myself a member.
> 5. If you had one thing to pass through SC or work on in an ASM committee,
> what would it be?

Comprehensive rewrite of the bylaws.  Probably either pertaining to SJ or SACGB.
> 6. What can SC do about tuition and fees at UW?

For tuition I’m pretty sure all we can do is beg and plead (although that has worked to some degree in the past).  As to fees, I would like the SSFC to continue closely monitoring GSSF groups, but I would like to find some way to prevent the administration from funding/creating faux grass roots movements to pass referendum a la Union South/Varsity Union/Whatever & NatUP.  Frankly, stopping this sort of thing from happening in the future is probably the most important issue any of us are going to face in our terms.
> 7. If you could be appointed to any ASM committee, which would it be and
> why?

Nominations – I would like the next wave of SJ justices to actually know what the standards of review they’re using mean.

> 8. How familiar are you with Robert’s Rules of Order?

Not that familiar.  What I do know I’m not a fan of.
> 9. Are there any causes you feel ASM should be championing?

Campus Safety.  I want University Health Services to be better utilized/fully affordable and I want the 80-82, saferide and safewalk to be available, advertised and convenient.  I don’t want any student to be victimized because they felt they had to save their saferides for an emergency.  This will probably be pricey, but if we have to make tradeoffs with GSSF funding/Student Council stipends, so be it.

> 10. What are your other commitments for the next academic year?

Law School is a full time job.