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ASM Constitution heads to campuswide referendum next spring
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The University of Wisconsin Associated Students of Madison Student Council approved the new constitution for the second and final time Wednesday, sending the draft to a campuswide referendum next spring.
The ASM Constitution has undergone a series of changes, including the rewording of various items to make their goals clearer and the decision to require a two-thirds majority approval for the election of a new ASM vice president and president.
ASM voted in favor of the instatement of the new constitution by an 11-0-2 vote. The votes represented a clear majority, and the movement was passed to formally recognize the changes made to the new constitution.
Controversy surrounding a recent student-based coalition formed in opposition to certain elements of ASM’s constitution took priority at the meeting’s open forum.
Student organizations, such as Hoofers and Working Class Student Union, said the executive position of the ASM Constitution is too powerful and that on certain issues, ASM does not adequately represent the student body.
Discussions also centered on the demolition and pending construction of Union South.
Various speakers said the 2006 student vote in favor of the demolition and reconstruction of Union South was democratically unsound due to faulty information given to students at the time of the vote.
According to Chynna Haas, president of the Working Class Student Union, at the time of the vote, students were informed they would be paying $10 per semester to fund the construction of Union South when in reality, the total per semester amounts to approximately $96.
Haas added that in supporting the vote to demand this dollar amount from UW students, ASM is serving to alienate “working-class students.”
“Student Council, the theoretical representation of the student body, should wash themselves clean of a process that was fundamentally undemocratic and would serve to disenfranchise working-class students,” said Kyle Szarzynski, Student Service Finance Committee representative and Badger Herald columnist.
According to Szarzynski, this student demographic should have some semblance of a voice on campus via the resolution to require a 15 percent student voter turnout for all capital building projects and decisions.
In response, ASM Chair Brittany Wiegand said, “I think it would undermine ASM’s legitimacy as a student government to try to change something that occurred two years ago that students are in favor of.”
Dan Cornelius, vice president of project management for Union South at UW, said though the price of construction is high, amounting to more than $90 million, he thinks “Student Council is upholding the student voice by refusing to address this petition.”
Eric Schmidt, member of the Student Union Initiative, added a great majority of students were in support of construction, leading to a process of approval that, in his opinion, was justifiably sound.
“I know a democratically legitimate process when I see one,” Schmidt said.
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If only Chynna had read the actual initiative language when she voted, where it clearly said, “An additional segregated fee not to exceed $96 per student per semester.”
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There is nothing that more definitively proves the worthlessness of ASM (Student Council specifically) than the events at yesterday’s SC meeting. The members of this “governing body” didn’t even bother to debate the possibility of a new referendum so that students could decide whether spending $200 a year on a new Union South is worth it. I can definitively say that a random sampling of 20 UW students would not only have overwhelmingly approved a new referendum, but voiced their opposition to an initiative that was rammed through in the most undemocratic fashion, decreasing working-class accessibility to this university in the process. In other words, the Student Council does not represent anything even remotely resembling the opinions of most students on this campus.
As for the Constitution, this was passed with almost no debate, leaving a dangerously powerful executive position and little protection for the funding streams of student organizations. This I’m less concerned with, however, since pro-student rights groups of all ideologies and viewpoints will easily defeat the new document in the referendum next spring.
In sum, the Student Council is a joke, an uncaring, unambitious body comprised of resumee-padders who reflexively do the bidding of the administration and big money interests, like the Wisconsin Union. I hope that some ambitious student will get enough signatures to recall the whole lot of this anti-student, do-nothing bunch.