In an effort to achieve a sense of meaningful consensus on student involvement in the Union South project over the last few months — a recent point of contention — the Associated Students of Madison’s Shared Governance Committee invited Union representatives to make their case Thursday.

After hearing grievances from former Union Vice President Dan Cornelius about the decrease of student input in the Union project at last week’s meeting, Shared Governance invited Union representatives to this week’s meeting to hear their side of the story.

Answering public criticism from Cornelius, Union representatives told Shared Governance that, in fact, student involvement has been very strong since the Design Committee disbanded at the beginning of last summer.

According to Will Hoffman, who participated in the design process over the summer and has been involved in Union planning since 2006, the level of student involvement over the summer was markedly higher than previous summers.

Cornelius’ biggest criticism has been that the student Design Committee was disbanded at the beginning of the summer, fatefully restricting student involvement in the planning process.

However, according to Shayna Hetzel, former Union president and current Union building project communications director, the Design Committee was never intended to persist past the completion of the design phase of the process.

Hoffman added to reinstate the Design Committee at this stage in the process would probably hurt more than help.

“At this point, with the furniture having moved along as far as it has, reinstating the Design Committee would be done haphazardly at best and would probably be a retroactive action to change what has already been accomplished,” Hoffman said.

Cornelius acknowledged if the committee determined aspects of the furniture selection and interior design phase did need to be changed, it could slow the process, but he did not necessarily see this as a negative.

“If [the Design Committee] did think that, I hope that is something that at least would be taken into consideration, to get it right,” Cornelius said. “We’re trying to build a 100-year building here, and I think we should make sure we are doing as good of a job as possible.”

Shared Governance member Claire Lynch said she would like to see more surveys that collected student input from the general student body instead of only the few representatives that would sit on a new Design Committee.

Considering that decisions regarding interior design are primarily a matter of aesthetic taste, Lynch agreed reinstating the Design Committee would unnecessarily burden the progress that has been made.

Shared Governance Chair Melissa Hanley said from what she has heard, student involvement has persisted, but she would like to see continued student involvement.

“The Union … seems more interested in finding excuses to fulfill their obligations to students rather than actually representing students’ $100 million investment in the future of our campus,” Cornelius said in a text message to The Badger Herald.