The Associated Students of Madison discussed the need to affirm their relevance to many unconcerned and dissatisfied members of the student body through a community building outreach campaign at the Student Council meeting Friday.
Concerned a large portion of the student body does not even know what ASM is, much less what it does for them throughout the year, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Representative Matthew Manes proposed a campaign to combat such isolation through community building efforts.
“Although we all walk the same steps and sit in the same lectures and attend the same classes, the reality remains that we lack as a school a cohesive sense of a university community,” Manes said.
This lack of community, he argued, is what fosters a disconnect between ASM and the student body and harbors disinterest towards the important issues they address.
“It appears to me that we don’t have a relevance, that pertinence needed for involvement because there is a definitive lack of an overarching campus community,” Manes said.
His proposal included ideas like having one basketball game a year with free admission for students and hosting corn roasts and ice cream socials on library mall.
Though the general idea of the campaign was broadly supported, other council members did voice concern over its potential effectiveness in making ASM relevant to the student body as a whole.
“I don’t think having ice cream socials and corn cookouts is what we want people to think of when they think about what ASM does for them,” Graduate School Representative Colin Ingram said.
ASM Secretary and School of Letters and Sciences Representative Kurt Gosselin added that he believes what has been lacking from the organization is a comprehensive outreach to inform students about what is going on over the course of the year.
He said that while events or ideas similar to this could work partially for that purpose, he saw the proposal as part of a larger marketing and communication strategy.
The campaign proposal was tabled until the next Student Council meeting in July.
Graduate School Representative Matthew Tobelmann saw the issue of ASM relevance and connecting with the student body as an integral part of his technology outreach and development initiative campaign proposal, which would look at ways ASM could use technology to improve the flow of information to students and increase campus cohesiveness.
The proposal included initiatives to refine and develop the outdated website, developing a network of student organizations and using technology to disseminate an information connection to students. It was referred to an external committee for further consideration.
Graduate School Representative Katrina Flores also called upon the council to consider an innovative multicultural initiatives campaign at the meeting.
This campaign would call for a comprehensive look into budget cuts made to diversity programs across campus to determine their effects, as well as actively work for the support and expansion of the student initiated course on intercultural dialogue.
“[The ICD course] really does provide an innovative model for what education can look like on this campus,” Flores said.
Though it is not the highest priority for Student Council at this time, she said that making it more of a priority would not only be helpful for diversity and issues of excellence, but also may help with how students can be more effective in taking control of their education.
The diversity initiative campaign would also support and create an inclusive excellence network for registered student organizations as an active generator of innovative multicultural initiatives.
A motion was passed to refer the campaign to the diversity committee.?
The next summer session of Student Council is scheduled for July 18.
