After a student grassroots coalition unveiled plans to reconstruct the student government’s constitution this week, members of the University of Wisconsin community have provided a mixed reaction to the announcement, beginning a dialogue that will likely continue throughout the semester.
During the group’s Monday kickoff, some of the 13 members of the Associated Students of Madison Constitutional Committee presented on their constitution, which they said aims to make ASM more representative and effective.
ACC Chair Alex Brousseau, a UW law student as well as the Badger Herald Editorial Board chair, said the general response so far has been mixed and that it’s too early to say how people will be coming down on the proposed document.
“So far I think it’s been a mixed bag, but everyone is definitely very curious about it,” Brousseau said. “It’s clear from the meeting people want to be involved and that’s great.”
The constitution includes an executive branch with a president, vice president and cabinet of directors, a senate as the legislative branch and a judicial branch, which will remain mostly unchanged.
“There has been some deadlock and some inconsistency in our current constitution,” Sarah Neibart, an ACC Greek representative who is also a current Student Services Finance Committee member, said Monday. “With this, we want to be more effective in serving students and not caught up in our internal bickering.”
Brousseau said the constitution as it stands is a baseline with which to begin and ACC will hold daily town hall meetings in the upcoming weeks to solicit suggestions and input from any students interested.
Aaron Spooner, co-director of GUTS and an attendee at Monday’s meeting, expressed concern that the introduction of an executive branch could raise questions of cronyism and too much power in the branch.
In response, Brousseau said it would benefit ASM to have a president who could generate involvement as the face of the body and that the senate will have the ability to check the appointees of the executive.
Neibart also said an appropriations branch will serve as the body overseeing student segregated fees and space, and with the new constitution there would be four separate funding streams for segregated fee accessibility.
SSFC representative Tia Nowack questioned the need to create new funding paths and asked why the constitution could not just revise eligibility criteria.
Also a topic of discussion during the kickoff was the comprisal of the members on the ACC, which is made up of editorial board members from both campus newspapers, college student government leaders and General Student Services Fund student organization leaders.
Some attendees expressed concern about the involvement of campus newspaper editorial boards and asked how ethics will play into continued coverage of ACC’s endeavors.
Brousseau stressed it is important to note that solely the editorial boards – involved in opinion content – were included, and that no one from the news departments on either paper had been notified until a few days ago.
ACC will hold its first town hall meeting today from 8 to 10 p.m. in the Student Activity Center, room 3118. Brousseau said anyone interested is encouraged to attend and can find more information at the ACC website at http://asmconstitution.com/.
