The Associated Students of Madison invited special guest speaker, Vice Provost for Diversity and Climate, Patrick Sims, to their meeting Wednesday night.

The Office of the Provost is going to be working on the Student Advisory committee in order to collaborate with ASM and share student voices, Sims said.  They are trying to create working committees to come up with ideas alongside ASM that can actually be worked with and have a chance to succeed.

There will be five goals for each of these six subcommittees, Sims said.

“Goal one will be promoting the shared values of diversity inclusion.  Goal two will be addressing the coordination of our diversity efforts. Goal three is talking about engaging leadership, goals four and five are talking about retention and recruitment of staff,” Sims said.

Some of those goals will end up creating two committees. The first committee will focus on faculty, staff and students, and the second on undergraduate learning.

Jessica Franco-Morales, Letters and Science representative, brought up the need for diversity and equity within ASM, and suggested a general training line intended for this use.

While every student has to take an ethnic studies course during their time at University of Wisconsin, a lot of students wait until their junior or senior year to take these courses, which is less than ideal, Sims said. There should be a wider window to have more meaningful discussions with students about diversity.

“The committee is talking about diversity of gender, diversity of sexual orientation, diversity of political philosophy and certainly diversity of race and ethnicity,” Sims said. “Diversity in the truest sense of the word … We have historically protected groups, and there are groups who get lost in the thread.  I intend to be very transparent, and open and welcoming to those other groups,” Sims said.

The various groups of students are represented well at ASM, Sims said. As a faculty member he said he hears many horror stories, and some students do not feel their interests are being taken into consideration. However, Sims wants to believe he can be an arbitrator and ensure every student feels safe and happy on campus.

While not every student can be happy with the committee’s decisions all the time, Sims hopes that they at least feel their voices are being heard.

During the meeting, Steven Hughes, Law representative, brought up a new Student Service Finance Committee legislation to create a stipend for the ASM finance committee in the internal budget.

The final part of the meeting was regarding the Internal Budget Review and Vote.  The council went through each aspect of the budget and asked for any oppositions, approving it with a 10-0 vote.