The Associated Students of Madison Student Council unanimously voted to endorse a student-voting member on the Alcohol License Review Committee Wednesday, which they will advocate for at the City Council meeting next week.
The original proposal was to increase the size of the ALRC in an effort to have more alder representation on the committee. Ald. Bryon Eagon, District 8, then proposed included a student position, or in other words, a representative of the age group that is major patrons of the downtown bars.
“We should be aware that ASM is giving up the right to appoint a member of the council. It’s regrettable, but more worthwhile even to have a voting member,” said Rep. Erik Paulson. “Now the requirement is that it just needs to be a student: whether from MATC, Edgewood or Madison.”
Rep. Matthew Manes said students make up one-fourth of the constituents of the city and are therefore worthy of the seat.
Currently, there is a non-voting ALRC member appointed by ASM. Senior Mark Woulf holds the seat. However, the voting member would be appointed by the mayor. Manes said this would mean students could trust their interests would be well represented.
The endorsement was passed without dissent from any of the members of council. Legislative Affairs Chair Adam Johnson said the best way for Student Council and the student body to show support would be to attend the City Council meeting next week.
“[Legislative affairs] will have our meeting as audience members of the City Council meeting. This will give us an opportunity to speak at open forum,” Johnson said. “But the primary response will be to the biggest criticism that students don’t care. We will invalidate that, which is important.”
Vice Chair Tom Tempelton’s proposed bylaw change was voted down at the meeting.
In his plan, each member could accumulate four excused and three unexcused absences in a session. Other major changes included being present for at least 80 percent of a meeting and removal of a Student Council member who exhausts all unexcused absences. Removal could be overturned by a two-thirds vote of the council.
“We’ve been hit hard in regard to our attendance issues. One of the goals in this session is accountability,” Templeton said. “At minimum we need to make sure that elected representatives are showing up at our meetings.”
Templeton said the 80 percent provision was similar to how the Student Services Finance Committee conducts its meetings. Currently, the attendance laws are set up so a member has to miss both the open and closing roll call to be marked as an unexcused absence. However, a member coming to opening roll call to have their name called but never actually staying for the entire meeting negates the point of his or her being at the meeting at all, Templeton said.
“There are too many fundamental problems, I can’t support this the way it is written,” said Paulson a Badger Herald opinion writer.
Other objections he raised were structural and philosophical problems, with not enough checks and balances in the new proposal and the exam rule being entirely too strict.
Secretary Kurt Gosselin said he felt missing one-third of the meetings was a legitimate reason for automatic removal.
“I agree with the spirit of this proposal. It definitely needs work, but the representatives on council need to be held accountable,” said SSFC Chair Brandon Williams.
The attendance policy was voted down and referred back to Templeton, who plans to rewrite the proposal and resubmit it to the council in the future.
