News
New mission creates split in next ASM
Newly-elected members of governing body exclude FACES from statement
Looking for a print version?
Simply use your browser’s ‘Print’ command and a printer-friendly document will be generated automatically.
Also by Taylor Cox:
- Colleges should learn from swine flu (May 6, 2009)
- ASM elects Junger chair (May 6, 2009)
- Alteration of system's code of conduct creates controversy (May 5, 2009)
- Promised cash may not come (May 5, 2009)
- U of M to go with Gmail (May 1, 2009)
Sharing tools:
E-mail this article:
Newly elected members of the Associated Students of Madison’s Student Council announced Wednesday a vision of the next session and the direction they hope to see the council go.
The vision statement has been supported by 19 of the new 31 Student Council members thus far. The 19 supporters represent each of the different colleges, Student Council representative Kurt Gosselin said.
Although the majority of the council signed a petition in support for the next session vision, none of the signatures came from members of the For Accessibility, Community and Empowerment of Students slate.
“FACES already outlined an agenda, so this is the campus moderates’ agenda of moving forward and making sure as many students as possible are addressed by these issues,” Gosselin said.
Gosselin added he supports many of the FACES ideas but objects to the way they propose to accomplish their goals.
The vision was structured around student ideas as well as ideas from current and new student council members, Gosselin added.
The group of unaffiliated members addressed six main points the Student Council plans to target in the next session, including communication between the student government and the student body, campus safety and fiscal responsibility.
“Communication between student government and students is one of the biggest issues,” ASM member Tyler Junger said.
“An 8.3 percent election turnout shouldn’t be considered successful,” he added in response to the latest Student Council election. “We want to get in touch with more students and convince them of the importance.”
The council hopes to accomplish this by different means of communication such as newsletters and YouTube videos.
The group also said the council looks to become more transparent to students. To do so, the group proposed posting all meeting minutes online for students to access, Junger said.
Junger added Student Council hopes to improve itself internally by improving its structure and the meeting dynamic.
Although structural improvement was discussed, no plan of a new constitutional proposal is planned thus far, Gosselin said.
Recently-elected Student Council representative Alexandria Harris, a member of the FACES slate, said she would have liked to have been included and informed of the press conference conducted by non-affiliated members of ASM.
“I would’ve liked to be involved, and we all would’ve liked to be involved,” Harris said. “The vision statement that we already had was made before the election and making another after the election is closed is simply childish.”
Harris said a meeting to take place next Sunday with the entire new Student Council would have been a more appropriate place to formulate such an agenda.
“Making an earlier meeting seems really underhanded,” Harris said. “It means there’s already mistrust and backstabbing and that’s not constructive for a healthy council.
Junger said the statement was made because unaffiliated members wanted to give another perspective to the students to have along with the statement previously created by the FACES slate.
9 Comments | Leave a comment
Leave a comment
Top Classified Ads (view all)
Place your classified ad online and have it show up here. Your ad will hit thousands of viewers a day!
DON'T READ ME! Too late. If you're reading this, guess how many other people are reading it. See... advertising in The Badger Herald does work!
IP hash: c88d123a
great! a split student government and gosselin with his eye on chair. students are up for a year of bickering with no outcomes and a circus led by a proven unethical, biased, and viewpoint neutrality-violating gosselin. yup, it really is going to be an awful year to be a student!
IP hash: cb321e46
A full version of the document is available at http://amatterofmethod.wordpress.com
IP hash: 24c59f1a
gosselin give it up already! Move on!
IP hash: 682ef883
This is so incredibly underhanded. Stop playing government and start working on the issues. If anything is going to happen this year in ASM, everyone needs to stop this factional B.S. and start working together. The Responsibility slate clearly isn’t interested in that at all. Gosselin and Junger I hope you’re not even considering to run for leadership because this is not the kind of shit we need.
IP hash: 6da29cba
This whole story just goes to show that Kurt Gosselin and Tyler Junger will stop at nothing to destroy the progressive coalition in ASM. Pathetic.
IP hash: 03c63a9f
Czar Kyle,
No matter how many times you, or your minions throw talking points on the Badger Herald, it will remain quite transparent. If you did not want moderate leadership of ASM, you should have won fair and square in the elections.
Love, Students
IP hash: 0eced538
“An 8.3 percent election turnout shouldn’t be considered successful,”
really? where did you EVER come up with that idea?
IP hash: bdb518c6
Why were any of these people allowed to run in the first place? I want to see their birth certificates, dammit!
IP hash: bff69093
Wait, since when did a story about two political parties in government become headline news?