Opinion: Column
ASM’s comedy of errors: horrible communication
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So the Associated Students of Madison fail again.
Vote No members may want to take credit for running a spectacular campaign — and said as much when they recently crept drunkenly into The Badger Herald office after celebrating their victory — but there are several factors in this race that indicate the failure to pass the ASM Constitution was more the result of ASM shooting themselves in the collective foot than Vote No’s persuasive arguments.
ASM let their constitution do the talking, which is the problem. Students will not read the constitution, nor do they care to understand it. They need to know the reason for it, what it will do and if those Vote No people are right. I personally explained the Vote Yes side to about eight people in the last few days — all of them had a similar response, “Oh. Well, had that been explained to me, I would have voted the other way.”
Bottom line: Jargon can’t do the talking for you — only you can.
But the regular student body is a blank slate when it comes to ASM. Try to feed them with one argument and they’ll probably find it reasonable.
The segregated fee-funded groups are another matter, which brings us to recently resigned Student Services Finance Committee Chair Kurt Gosselin.
Regardless of what has been said on the comment boards here, I highly doubt Gosselin threatened student groups funding streams. That doesn’t mean the groups didn’t feel threatened by him, however.
A member of one General Student Services Fund group told me on the condition of anonymity that the chair of his organization was confronted by Gosselin in an elevator where he suggested he might put off an alternative funding structure for student groups when elected if the student organization leader in question backed off their support for the “No” vote.
Gosselin denied such a situation ever happened, but he did say he had discussed a new way to fund student groups. Until I see evidence from other groups that he did indeed threaten groups, I’ll assume claims of threats are still rumors. But the proposed funding stream might have played a part.
So as to not bore audiences with details, here’s the basic gist of it: Instead of GSSF groups forming around a basic service or need, ASM could decide certain services needed on campus — tutoring, diversity education, etc. — and contract with groups to provide such a service. So instead of student groups starting based on needs they want to provide, ASM would decide what services need to be provided and contract with the group that provided the best strategy to execute.
Now, Gosselin is a good man, but he does talk a lot about these sorts of nuanced strategies. He said he discussed the possible plan at length with only a few select people.
Unfortunately, included among those people were Kyle Szarzynski, Adam Porton and Chynna Haas. Considering that Haas is head of Campus Women’s Center, a GSSF-funded group and likely found this problematic, it’s not such a leap of faith to assume this talk of an alternate funding stream got around to student groups joining the chorus of no.
And frankly, this makes much more sense as to why the student groups bought into the “jeopardized funding” argument. The mere presence of an executive vetoing whole budgets only serves to slow down the process and doesn’t seem too compelling an argument. But insert the idea of an executive who already has a plan to change the entire rationale of funding, and it makes perfect sense for every funded group — especially the ones that have trouble articulating their service to campus — to oppose the new constitution.
Frankly, we could blame this whole failure on Gosselin’s big mouth, but you know what could have stopped this at the gates? Simply listening to the GSSF groups and not allowing the president to veto GSSF budgets. First off, any decision to veto those budgets is going to be mired in viewpoint neutrality suits in Student Judiciary. I wouldn’t be surprised if every group involved sued after every veto. And unless the rationale is airtight, it’s unlikely the president could have defended these vetoes with much success.
But the bigger problem is the reform that prompted this constitution had almost nothing to do with funding. It had to do with the argument that grassroots committees don’t mesh well with a governmental structure designed to uphold bureaucracy. Segregated fee funding can certainly be altered to break out of the very limited public forum our scrambling ASM ancestors came up at the beginning of this decade, but that isn’t a battle that any of us were immediately concerned with.
So can ASM try again by swatting presidential hands from the controls of the gravy train? I don’t know. That’s up to the groups to decide. But maybe it’s worth a shot. The alternative is a protracted, painful, complex set of Student Council slates and worthless posturing that will result in another year of conversations 90 percent of campus blocks out.
And if that results in more “heart to hearts” with Kyle Szarzynski at 2 a.m. in the morning to chat about how powerful the campus left is, well, count me the fuck out.
Jason Smathers (jsmathers@badgerherald.com) is a senior majoring in history and journalism.
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While you make some legitimate points, they are really mired by the personal vendetta you have against the Vote No Coalition.
If there was one thing the Vote Yes Coalition should've learned from this whole thing, it was that they should work WITH the left and come to reasonable compromises (if they would've worked with the coalition's concerns about funding streams for GSSF groups, the Vote No coalition probably wouldn't have even formed). Constantly working against the left, especially when they're working in conjunction with a shit ton of GSSF groups, just alienates groups and causes problems.
GSSF leaders told ASM leadership back in November that they wanted the process to slow down and not be rushed to a vote in February. They wanted to compromise with ASM, but warned that if they were not listened to in this process that they would mobilize students to vote no on the constitution. ASM did not listen to the groups, the groups mobilized as promised, now here we are without a new constitution. Why is this shocking to anyone?
Wow. There have been an inordinate number of stupid op-eds in BH lately but this takes the cake. Instead of all these lame personal attacks Mr. Smathers would do good to realize that with 15% turnout and a 60-40 vote no that the student body really didn't like the proposed constitution. Critics give the vote no coalition too much credit when they argue that that they managed to manipulate 4,000 students with lies and slander to vote the document down. The fact is that people realized, helped in part by ASM's own rhetoric, that the proposed constitution was little more than an attempt by a reactionary campus elite to consolidate power and put the blame for our student government's gross ineptitude on its structure. Vote No managed to engage the student body, something that ASM has been unable and/or unwilling to do. In my opinion, Mr. Smathers would do himself and the rest of us a lot good if he drops the journalism major and quits BH immediately. In any case, this week's vote goes to show the increasing irrelevance of Mr. Smathers and the BH editorial board.
I'm sorry but the Badger Herald backed Bryon Eagon 1, the far-left backed Katrina Flores 0. Apparently the Herald isn't that "increasing[ly] irrelevant". Irrelevant enough for you to comment at 1:42am!
No one cares about ASM votes while the real activists really, really, really wanted Eli Judge's seat and lost.
1:26 - You're right.
1:50 - Make whatever statements you want about why Vote No won, but if you really think 4,000 students collectively articulated the dream of Take Back ASM and the Vote No Coalition, then you are delusional. Vote No didn't manipulate with lies and slander, they simply got to students first and had little to counter act the message.
And by the way, I find it incredibly hypocritical for someone who signs onto a coalition of groups -- that believes in grassroots activism and ground-level organizing is the true way to speak truth to power -- would argue 15 percent of an electorate clicking three buttons on their laptops is "engaging the student body."
-Smathers
I think you mean 1:42, there are no 1:50 comments
the BH has endorsed two winning City D8 and County D5 candidates in the past 10 years, Vedder(PD) in 2002 and Eagon(Dems) in 2009. Don't give yourself more credit than the campaigns, as your actual track record on campus elections is rather embarrassing.
They endorsed Judge -- timid -- but they endorsed Judge. And 2/2 now suggests the Herald's power grows while PD slows. Even the Cap Times, a liberal newspaper, is reporting such facts. Bad time to be on the ultra-left in Madison.
Gosselin played a huge role in the failure of the Vote yes coalition. You wonder why asm couldn't work with Gssf groups? gosselin was threatening people in asm that he would resign if anybody tried to change it at council. it's just too bad for the vote yes people.
There isn't a chair of CWC.
I would have supported an amendment to remove the Presidential Veto over GSSF budgets. Secondly, the GSSF budgets were to be treated as an entire block, so the idea of a President vetoing 1 individual groups budget was neve an option this whole time.
Third, it is true that I discussed alternative funding models with my previous Vice Chair Adam Porton, my then Secretary Kyle Szarzynski & shared a summary of possible alternatives and the benefits/drawbacks of easing into an alternative with Chynna Haas who had been curious to some of these ideas I had shared with Adam. If I recall, the conversations with Adam date back to last school year, and the conversations with Kyle & Chynna occurred in early November (maybe mid-November) of this school year. Well before the third draft was ever completed or released. I also indicated at this time that in order to focus reform efforts on the greater ASM as a whole, I would not entertain this idea of an alternative funding model this year. The Constitutional Committee discussed this alternative as a possible approach to funding services on campus early in its work (over the Summer I believe) and decided not to incorporate it into the Constitution or plans for reform.
Unfortunately this may have fueled some of the fire around which the Vote No group was organized. It is unfortunate that fear and hysteria over funding was one of the contentions in this debate, especially because the Constitutional Committee had decided not to make any radical changes. The majority of the changes instituted actually gave SSFC/Appropriations more say in the budget process as a hope of eliminating possible political tampering.
The worst thing that we could see concerning the seg fee process on campus would be to return to the politically-charged mess of 1999-2003 era, where groups would stack Council and SSFC to fund themselves. As indicated on WI Lounge, SSFC/Appropriations seg fee allocations need to remain as apolitical as possible & the diversity of funding streams needs to be increased to better fund the groups and services necessary for campus. It's time to stop shoving square pegs in round holes.
Smathers, your theories on why the constitution failed are interesting...but there are probably a host of other reasons why this failed.
Snaps for anyone who will entertain this question: do you think that, in light of Prop 8/Fair WI votes no in '06, there is a stigma attached to voting 'yes' in an election? I want to believe that people are more thoughtful than to generalize that every 'Yes' vote is bad and every 'No' vote is just...but I have my doubts.
I doubt it 11:43, this past fall's Madison School Board Referendum was a vote yes campaign, and passed pretty easily, and had a high number of students vote yes for it.
Smathers, this was probably my favorite column of yours in a while. Couldn't agree more on your rationale for the "Vote No" win.
I like how you all will point to every single reason in the world that the constitution failed...
except for the constitution itself.
I wish all of the people who act like morons commenting on here would do somthing productive with their time and do something to make a difference on campus.
This article coming from a guy who was invited to consult on ASM's communications strategy last year, but forgot to show up. Classic Smathers.
Hey maybe you should've done a little more than put out some poorly written pompous articles out?