Opinion: Column
Average students, know what ‘no’ vote could destroy
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For all the talk about the Associated Students of Madison, the one thing that almost never materializes is outreach and communication to normal students.
No ASM members, no campus elite and no members of the press. Just regular students — history majors, medical students, undecideds and the rest of the individuals making up the student body who just focus on getting through the semester with decent grades.
So for once, I’m going to put my ASM pretensions aside and try to cut through the jargon for all the students who just don’t know what this all means.
Bottom line: For the majority of you, this constitution could pass or not and it would have almost no effect on you in the immediate future.
A new ASM and a new president isn’t going to change much about how you deal with this university. If you weren’t involved in student government before, there’s only a slight chance that all the hoopla — if you indeed have seen a significant increase in chatter about the constitution — will make you that much more interested in the day-to-day management of our student government.
But whether or not you actually are active, you have ASM there to use in case you want to effect change at a university (or city or even state) level.
The problem is if this constitution doesn’t pass, you may not have that opportunity for a while. Because there are enough people who have followed ASM from day one and understand the current system of student government and representation must be scrapped.
Let’s give some background: ASM was created after the old, long-standing student government, the Wisconsin Student Association, was disbanded because of rampant corruption including, but not limited to, misappropriation of funds and stuffing ballot boxes during elections. After WSA was disbanded, a vacuum appeared. There was no student government body, no official outlet for representation and no students to decide how to dole out your segregated fees — dollars that come directly out of your tuition and go to services you use such as the Memorial Union and recreational sports.
So they decided to rebuild the student government, this time with a sort of parliamentary system instead of a presidential structure, since that’s what corrupted things last time.
The problem is that, over 15 years, that structure had almost the exact opposite problem — nothing got done.
Sure, ASM got us bus passes. Sure, they got us an extra study day. But when you look at those two “victories” and constantly harp on them as all you’ve accomplished in nearly two decades, can you really say you’re a successful representative body? Especially when the vast majority of the student body has either not heard of them or have no idea what they do?
Not really. And that became more apparent last semester with the “State of the ASM” address. It was meant to be a media meeting to represent all ASM has done in the last year. Instead, its poor organization, extremely low turnout and lack of any clear goals, victories or real direction sent a shockwave through the organization.
The resulting conclusion? This government doesn’t just have a few missing floorboards — the whole foundation was cracked from the beginning.
So after months of discussions, planning, meetings with the different groups of students and an updated blog, they came up with a document to return the government to its presidential system (which had worked for decades before corruption eventually took it down) and implement some safeguards to give more power to the Student Senate — as long as those elected actually show up.
Unfortunately, a few student groups believe this system is an affront to democracy. Especially one with such a stretched voice already. They think this constitution will take away their funding, their activism and, most importantly, their voice.
Here’s the problem: If this doesn’t pass, you’re most likely not going to have a voice.
Sure, we could all go back to the table, twiddle our fingers again and say, “All right, how do we make a constitution that appeals to everyone?” Not only would that fail, but the drive of senior members of ASM who have to atone for the sins of their resume-padding predecessors, who did largely nothing for the student body, would dissolve.
I know Jeff Wright, the constitutional committee chair who’s been leading most of these efforts. He can say he came back to get another degree, but in my mind, he made up an excuse to come back to school, fix this student government and leave it in better shape than he found it. If this measure fails, you won’t have many Jeff Wrights ready to go back and work out a solution. You’ll just have people throwing up their hands and in pure frustration, giving in to people like me who just look at our student government and say, “Just let it die.”
I don’t need to tell you what’s wrong with the opponents of the constitution because the editorial board laid it out perfectly. But what I do need to say is without passing this constitution, the political activism we saw on a national level regarding the presidential election will be dealt a severe blow on a local level. Demands of the student body for different ticketing systems for sports events, more study days before finals and more amenities from segregated fees will fall on deaf ears for a while — until the next student government is crafted out of the ashes of the old one. But that may not be for a year. Maybe years.
So to those regular students who look at this controversy and say, “I don’t care,” know this: Apathy is regrettable, but it’s still a choice you can choose to make. If ASM goes down, when it comes to political involvement in your university, that choice will likely not exist. Apathy will be the default.
And believe me, we’re only a week and a couple of votes away from that sad reality.
Jason Smathers (jsmathers@badgerherald.com) is a senior majoring in history and journalism.
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“if this doesn’t pass, you’re most likely not going to have a voice” You couldn’t be more wrong, please listen to the arguments from those who critique this proposed “reform.”
Centralizing power in ASM is going to TAKE AWAY student’s ability to have a direct voice in their government. I think we’ve learned from the Bush administration that simply criticizing a strong central power in government isn’t necessarily going to change what decisions they make. ASM was created for grassroots student involvement, so that we can have a DIRECT SAY in the decisionmaking process. The reason why ASM is failing is because of a lack of interest in their student government. We can fix this problem by getting more involved as students, and have a more democratically-organized community. Centralizing power does not gaurantee that the best decisions will be made..encouraging democratic participation, however will. The ASM problem mirrors our problem nationally with lack of direct democratic participation in government. This new proposal is not reform, it’s regression away from democracy!
Do you feel you have a direct say in the decision making process now? You probably have never tried. I can’t help but notice that those who are against the constitution are people who have never tried to work with the current system. They are not interested in maintaining the say they have in the current system. If that was the case, they would have been active in ASM before. This is all about funding. A couple GSSF groups are worried about their dollars and are willing to bring the entire student government down for that reason.
“A couple GSSF groups are worried about their dollars and are willing to bring the entire student government down for that reason.” False dilemma. If the proposed constitution is voted down, then we’ll just stay with the system we have now. The student government doesn’t need to be “brought down”, it’s been down for some years now. In the meantime, change for the sake of change is bad. ASM’s current constitution used to get things done—ASM bus passes, finals study day, and invading the chancellor’s office. The problem isn’t the constitution, it’s the leadership.
“If this doesn’t pass, you’re most likely not going to have a voice” We already don’t have a voice—GSSF groups have been raising hell for months and nobody listened until things got bad enough for Kurt Gosselin to be ousted.
You somehow assume that if this thing fails, all those students who have poured their heart out trying to reform this system will go back to business as usual. I think that if this thing fails things are going to get worse. The students in ASM, especially those who interface with GSSF groups, spend hundreds of thankless hours, not earning $9.19/ hour, so that this system may survive. Now we have GSSF members saying you guys have failed us. Well, do you think it is worth it if their effort to promote student power, provide good representation, and protect seg fees is spat upon. I think that if this is voted down, those who have spent so much time trying to improve ASM will leave. Mass exodus. You will be left with the impotent system that you had 8 years ago, when seg fees where allocated via pissing contests. After a few years of that, the entire system is gone.
The mentality here is simple to understand. The vote yes group is a grounded in a group of current ASMers who want to make the student government more than what it currently is. They want to improve the ability of ASM to advocate for students.
The vote-no group is mostly GSSF groups and their allies who are afraid of their seg fees disappearing. They think that if they get this constitution to fail, things will go back to the way it was. The known is a lot more comfortable than the unknown. The comment by 2:52 just proves that they have no vested interest in improving ASM.
The entire argument about activism is a facade. No one has any intention of turning ASM into the campus hub for activism. GSSF groups have to realize that this plan would only endanger their precious seg fees.
This is pure, unabashed selfishness. The vote-no group does not have the best interest of the entire student body in mind. They are only interested in promoting their own causes and ensuring that the funding remains in place to do it.
@4:16: A system that’s failing because things barely done will not be improved by adding more red tape. Vote no people acknowledge that change is necessary, but that this is not the direction to head in. -2:52, GSSF member
@4:16: Now that the most ambitious antagonist to GSSF groups is gone (until very recently, there was indeed a very credible hazard), the biggest problem with the proposed constitution is that every committee added drags out the process more and more.
Right now, eligibility is established, a budget is compiled and presented, then SSFC grills you and then argues amongst itself. This committee process takes not more than 3 SSFC meetings for almost all groups. But the new constitution would have the budget be deliberated by the Appropriations committee, then has to be approved by the president, who can veto it, where it would then sent to a conference committee?
How is this a better system? They’ve just added more places for the system to trip over its own feet, which can be exploited for leverage if there’s internal friction within the government. Case in point: look at the recent fire on BH online comments between SSFC members Kyle Szarzynski and (formerly) Kurt Gosselin.
-2:52
in the current asm, the student council can amend an individual gssf budget or send any gssf budget to a conference committee. everyone is acting as though the new gov’t puts more red tape in the ssfc process, but it really doesn’t. it’s too bad that the vote no people (Kyle et al.) have not read the current constitution
@10:30: Yes, the student council—not one person with a personal agenda to push.
-2:52
In response to the title and opening of this article…”Just regular students — history majors, medical students, undecideds and the rest of the individuals making up the student body who just focus on getting through the semester with decent grades.”
The press/blogosphere at UW is so dominated by self described “campus elites” and politicos that I would argue what you deem “normal” students may not be genuinely apathetic people, but rather students who are simply overwhelmed by those who wage chaotic cyber debates on a day-to-day basis. In fact, most students here at UW seem to be pretty engaged in one if not more non-academic activities. In addition to amending the constituion, ASM (and perhaps the BH editorial page) should work on ways to foster dialogue across campus, and at the same time avoid generalizing all students who aren’t as engaged in heated ASM debates as the apathetic, lazy, simpleminded mass. So, while I found this article informative, I also thought it pretty condiscending (as expected, and imagine it will hardly have the desired effect of engaging us “normal” students.
-Sam Chasin Chasin@wisc.edu