An initiative to impeach Associated Students of Madison Chair Bryan Gadow and Vice Chair Emily McWilliams continued for almost seven and a half hours Thursday, with eight speakers still waiting to be heard and no decision at press time.
In other debate, an amendment that would have significantly changed the university’s segregated fese system was narrowly defeated.
The complaints against the two chairs, dictated by Badger Party member Jacqueline Helmrick, were twofold. First, Helmrick’s faction believed Gadow had not done enough to initiate communication with Chancellor John Wiley after he recently overturned ASM’s decision to deny the Moviemento Estudiantil Chicano Aztlan group segregated fee funding.
“They refused to have a discussion about this for a long time,” Helmrick said. “I think the chair and the vice chair should be representatives of this council, not the administration.”
The second charge related to financial expenditures for travel, food, a video series and an advertisement, but factions of the body doubted whether Gadow and McWilliams were responsible for the expenditures.
“At this time I am not making any accusations that any money has been spent illegally,” Helmrick said. “But I’m concerned about my lack of understanding about where some of this money was spent.”
Gadow, stepping down from the chair for the impeachment debate, chose to defend only McWilliams.
“One of the things you can’t use to remove Emily is the MEChA decision, because she had nothing to do with it,” Gadow said. “If you want to debate that, your debate’s with me.”
Gadow railed at the ASM members for their behavior during the meeting, likening himself to a babysitter.
“This is not why I ran for ASM, and this is not why I wanted to be Chair,” Gadow said.
The body also debated an unrelated amendment, if passed Thursday and at the next meeting, would have significantly changed seg fees.
The amendment resolved to continue to have the Student Segregated Finance Committee approve the budgets of seg–fee groups. But a student would have the option at payment of tuition to not pay for support of any groups, using form like a ScanTron sheet.
Using the percentages of the students who chose to opt out, SSFC scale the individual budgets back.
Badger Party introduced the resolution two thirds of the way into the meeting, and many members argued they had not had time to adequately review such a major change. In the end, it failed to secure the two-thirds vote necessary to pass.
