When Jessica Miller signed on to her current job as chair of the Associated Students of Madison last May, she promised to be a “facilitator.”
What that meant was not clear at the time. Of course the chair of one of the nation’s largest public school student government systems would be a facilitator. Her work, most supporters said, was cut out for her.
But as her first semester facilitating comes to a close, it is hard to put a finger on what has been facilitated.
According to Miller, as well as other prominent members of ASM such as Scott Spector, who toyed with the idea of running for chair last year himself, ASM under Miller has become an internal affair. While it may be hard to pinpoint what has been done, Miller contends, this year’s student government is setting a concrete foundation for students of the UW-Madison campus for the future.
“It’s pretty hard to do things in a semester,” she said. “You don’t build a new building in a semester. You don’t substantially increase campus safety in a semester. That’s not realistic.”
Instead, Miller said, each ASM committee is setting its own agenda and working one-on-one with students and administers to promote change at UW.
“I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve done this semester,” Miller said, naming the work the Legislative Affairs Committee has done in working to add a new student regent to the UW Board of Regents, as well as the Advising and Tenants Rights campaigns.
But Miller will admit ASM is a lot different under her leadership.
Last year, then-chair Mike Dean was in the media so much he became hounded for it. His Getting Things Done campaign was easily spotlighted, as were the tangible changes now noticeable on campus, such as the popular L-line bus route. Dean worked tirelessly to give ASM a positive face in the media.
Dean, too, will admit he has noticed an incredible difference in the work ASM is doing this year.
“I think there’s a real different type of leadership style between Jess and I,” Dean said.
Under his leadership, he said, ASM was “not trying to do these broad, general-type issues that you can never prove you got done.”
So the missing link, according to Dean, is that last year’s ASM worked hard to rally student support. Most of this, he said, was through the media.
“Every year great things get done but a lot of people don’t hear about it,” Dean said. “That was a priority last year.”
While Dean’s face appeared in campus newspapers countless times last year, Miller has yet to appear. While Dean called press conference after press conference, released press release after press release, and stayed in constant contact with the media last year, this year ASM is practically invisible.
According to Miller, ASM’s retraction from the media spotlight does not mean less work is being done. Instead, she said, the group is working tirelessly behind the scenes.
“It’s a lot of meeting, it’s a lot of lobbying and it’s a lot of going out and meeting with students one on one,” she said. “A lot of what we’re trying to get done is dependent on having student support, but at the same time we really depend on getting our work out one on one.”
But Dean said media work is key to getting things done.
“There’s a huge mentality out there that ASM doesn’t do anything,” he said. “The way you debug that is through the media. We could have done a lot more things if we hadn’t had to worry about the media, but that’s part of the job.”
Spector said he supports how Miller is handling her job.
“She is more of an organizational person,” he said. “As an internal leader she’s been great. A lot of the time in the past ASM has been in the media and it’s been very negative, and the main job is to get things done and accomplish things for students, not to be in the headlines.”
Miller contends also that the results people want to see will show themselves in the long run.
“People are going to start seeing tangible results from all the work we’re doing,” she said.
Miller said that though Dean’s embrace of the media (he recently confided that his job was to set goals, accomplish them and then tell people about it) worked for him, she is confident she is working just as vigilantly.
“I do a lot of trouble shooting,” she said. “I do a lot of facilitating internally.”
She pinpoints this to the very promises she made when running for the seat, leading back to her role as a “facilitator.”
“I didn’t have an agenda (when I ran),” she said. “That’s been fine internally. Externally, it’s just very different from how things were last year. I think that’s been hard for the media. Because we don’t have a coordinated, centralized plan this semester it makes it that much harder.”
