In answer to cries of a constitutional crisis and ineffectiveness taking center stage for much of the Associated Students of Madison’s fall semester, one group of students has crafted a new governing document to fix a student government they see as broken.
Members of the ASM Constitutional Committee, a grassroots coalition of students from different sectors of campus, said the group aims to restructure the government to foster better student leaders and allow more students to get involved in their governance. Among the groups involved in framing the new document were student government leaders from the colleges, members of the editorial boards from both campus newspapers and leaders from General Student Services Fund student organizations.
Among the changes included in the document, the constitution outlines the creation of an executive branch, with a president and vice president, a Senate as the legislative branch and a judicial branch.
According to the document, the president and vice president would run on a joint ticket and be elected by the student body in the spring. The president would appoint a Cabinet of Directors to chair the grassroots ASM committees, which will remain unchanged.
The constitution also mandates the creation of an Appropriations Branch, which splits the current duties of the Student Services Finance Committee into four subcommittees.
Sarah Neibart, one of the two Greek representatives on the body and the current SSFC chair, said the last semester of ASM shed light on the inconsistencies that exist between the bylaws and the constitution.
“A constitutional crisis has arisen in that the bylaws and the constitution don’t match,” she said. “The new constitution will make the government more efficient and cater to students’ interests more directly.”
She added the creation of four standing committees on student organization funding, internal financing, ancillary and auxiliary funding, and space allocation under one branch would make the funding process more accessible to students.
The new governing document would also serve to streamline the duties of various committees and function in a model similar to the United States’ government, ACC Chair Alex Brousseau said.
She said many of the problems with ASM in the past and current sessions have been internally based. She also said inconsistencies arise because every branch of the body has many duties and their separation of power allowed by the current structure is not that concrete.
Brousseau, who is the chair of The Badger Herald Editorial Board and a law school student, cited last semester’s controversies surrounding the appointments of Beth Huang and Niko Magallon, as well as the proposed legislation to establish a committee with oversight over SSFC, as examples of the deficiencies in the current constitution.
By hosting information sessions for nearly two weeks in the Student Activity Center, she said students will be able to provide feedback and discuss the proposed constitution and participate in its revisions.
“By doing this, we’re bringing light to the deficiencies and by having students participating in crafting bylaws and the constitution and showing that ASM can do good instead of just getting bad press,” Brousseau said.
Ronald Crandall, president of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Student Government, characterized the new constitution as a fundamental shift that stands to change student involvement in politics and get more people involved in ASM.
Crandall said the proposed constitution lends a more legitimate tone to the work the various student councils across the University of Wisconsin System have been doing for years, and said it helps to reconcile the gap that currently exists between ASM and the students in their constituency.
The new structure allows for the development of student leaders in their respective schools and within ASM, he said, and could effectively help students better than in the current structure.
ASM Chair Allie Gardner questioned the inclusiveness of the project and said she had not been involved in drafting the new constitution. She suggested students had been informed during the process only selectively, saying current committee chairs and Student Council representatives she had spoken with were not informed of the initiative.
“People will make the argument that the effectiveness of ASM is due to the students involved or the structure and we have to figure out to what extent those statements are actually true,” she said. “Having a wide level of student engagement is really important and any changes need to explain how to continue to expand student involvement.”
Information sessions on the constitution will be hosted every day in the SAC beginning Monday and running until Feb. 5, with the kickoff also taking place Monday. The committee will also be launching a website for any student to view the documents before a presentation to Student Council Feb. 29.
