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ASM points to campus change
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by Tess Liebetrau
Friday, March 4, 2005
The spring committees and campaigns of Associated Students of Madison detailed their semester goals to benefit students and the community at a press conference Thursday.
At the meeting, titled “You Need to Know,” ASM representatives talked about upcoming tuition hikes, increasing student seating at sporting events and continuing to enhance diversity on the UW campus.
The Academic Affairs Committee is tackling the issue of tuition hikes and the creation of a textbook rental program to start in Fall 2005. According to committee chair Ashok Kumar, a recent study showed that the average college student spends $900 on textbooks per year.
“The creation of a textbook rental program hopes to challenge [the] status quo, bring the university and the legislation back to actually caring about the people who they serve, and ultimately benefit all students,” Kumar said.
ASM Shared Governance committee plans to address three key issues this semester, according to committee chair Eyal Halamish. He said their goals included the allowance of outside food in the Union, as long as it is sealed, a 25 percent increase of student representation on university committees and an increase in student athletic tickets.
“There are 40,000 students at this university and nearly 2,200 student tickets sold each [basketball] season,” Halamish said. “Every Badger deserves the opportunity to attend a Badger game.”
Also on this semester’s agenda is the continuing support of the McBurney Center and the devotion to aiding students with disabilities, according to Stephanie Biese, chair of the Campus Accessibility Committee.
“Without this relatively small amount of money, two million dollars over the course of the budget, disability centers at every UW-system school will suffer,” Biese said. “Services that many students need, over 1,000 at UW-Madison alone, will have to be cut.”
ASM will also continue to work towards enhancing diversity on campus through the work of Plan 2008. According to chair Jeff Wright, the committee remains devoted to achieving a greater diversity at UW.
He added the group wants to implement a mandatory student diversity training session for all students attending SOAR. They also plan on designing a diversity summit in the Business School and pairing underrepresented students with specific college and department professors.
“These three branches of the Plan 2008 Campaign are only a single piece in the process of diversifying the university and maintaining its unique, creative, open-minded, and most importantly, respectful, environment for all UW students,” Wright said.
In addition, ASM is dedicating this spring semester to holding state legislators accountable for policies affecting students, according to an ASM release. The Campus Accessibility committee plans to make 12 different lobbying visits with the state’s Joint Finance Committee, while ASM’s Legislative Affairs Committee will also make 12 different state lobbying visits.
The Student Activity center helps to facilitate buildings that will create available space for a majority of the student organizations that exist on campus. This semester the group plans to complete a letter-writing campaign with 25 other student organizations to help ASM lobby the governor.
Anonymous (March 4, 2005 @ 8:27am):
"Mandatory student diversity training"? Since when are incoming students required to be subjected to a student group's ideas and beliefs? Isn't that what the university ethics requirement is for?
I'm in full support of diversity because I've seen value in learning about other cultures and ideas as a check of my own culture and ideas. Engaging in discussion with other cultures is a very rewarding experience. But to require incoming students to take a diversity seminar isn't an inviting way of challenging their minds to differing ideas. If anything, it's a turnoff to being open to those ideas.
Would ASM tolerate the College Republicans pushing for a required "conservative seminar" for students at SOAR? I think not.
Anonymous (March 4, 2005 @ 8:51am):
Goal #1: Go away.
Anonymous (March 4, 2005 @ 3:31pm):
I'm glad us smart college students have learned the difference between ethics and ethnic studies...
Anonymous (March 6, 2005 @ 9:25am):
Where is ASM on Social Security? That issue is about 1,000 times more important than the last presidential election was.
Anonymous (March 6, 2005 @ 3:06pm):
Wow..."dynamic Academic Affairs Committee"...please, sending out letters to parents...whoa very dynamic
JB (March 6, 2005 @ 11:55pm):
if you don't think AAC is very dynamic, just come to some meetings... we're overflowing with dynamics.
