All meetings for the Madison Initiative for Undergraduates Oversight Committee will now be open to the public after a Badger Herald reporter was ejected from a meeting Monday.
Spokesperson for the University of Wisconsin John Lucas said after seeing the response from student groups, the committee decided to open today’s meeting and all subsequent ones.
“They talked about it and just decided there’s no reason not to have those meetings open,” Lucas said.
Associated Students of Madison Vice Chair and committee member Tom Templeton said he and ASM are very happy with the decision to open the meetings.
“ASM has a very clear stance that we want all of our meetings open,” he said.
The confusion began when the reporter was sent away from a meeting of the committee and was told the meeting would be closed for “personnel reasons.”
The Office of the Provost later sent a statement saying the meeting was closed because the committee’s function was advisory. However, state open meeting laws indicate it is not a committee’s function, but rather how it was formed that makes that committee subject to open meetings laws.
If the committee was formed by an official ruling, it is then subject to the laws. If the committee was formed informally, it can close its meetings whenever it wishes.
Minutes from a UW System Board of Regents meeting indicate one MIU committee was officially created at its May 7 meeting; however, UW officials said Chancellor Biddy Martin informally ordered the MIU Oversight Committee.
While there is still some confusion about whether the committee ordered by the Board of Regents is the same MIU Oversight Committee of Monday’s meeting, Lucas said the committee wanted to make sure its process was visible to students.
“[Closing its meetings] really is not the spirit of transparency or openness with which MIU wants to operate,” Lucas said.
Templeton echoed this statement, saying ASM wanted students to be involved with and aware of the MIU proposals.
“We wanted students to be in the know about the whole process,” Templeton said.
