Members of the University of Wisconsin student government voted in Rep. Andrew Bulovsky as new vice chair during Wednesday night’s Student Council meeting.
Bulovsky was elected with 13 votes. Opposing candidate Rep. Libby Wick-Bander received the remaining 12 votes.
Prior to the vote, candidates addressed issues such as promoting awareness of the Associated Students of Madison, student voting and their intentions if elected to vice chair during a debate.
“If elected as vice chair, one of the things I’ll really want to work on is acting as a liaison between the grassroots committees to make sure that they’re working on things together as much as possible,” Bulovsky said before the meeting. “Because quite often they have some issues with some overlap.”
Wick-Bander said she was committed to making sure communities of students are comfortable with ASM. She added the vice chair’s role was to effectively push student interest, unlike the role of a facilitator.
Further ASM appointments include the nomination and election of Laura Dunek to the Shared Governance Working Group, Rep. Beth Huang to Shared Governance Committee Chair and Reps. Tom Sannito and Maria Giannopoulos to the Nominations Board.
The Council also approved the removal of Johnny Koremenos as a Student Council representative because he exceeded the number of unexcused absences allowed.
During the meeting’s open forum, Multicultural Student Coalition members applied to the Council for help in acquiring funding eligibility.
The group was denied eligibility by the Student Services Finance Committee following wage violations committed this previous summer and again in December. Appeals to SSFC and the Student Judiciary were denied, prior to solicitation to Council.
According to Cecilia Leon, a fifth year student and MCSC member, the group has “gone through every process” soliciting for its cause.
“We’ve done our research and we know exactly where we need to go. And if this has to go to the chancellor, it will,” Leon said.
Freshman Rep. Mia Akers spoke to the Council proposing a new outreach policy to better utilize representatives’ time.
The suggested policy would mandate two hours of representatives’ required four hours of office hours to be spent in reaching out to student organizations.
During those two hours of outreach, representatives would attend student organizations’ meetings and provide them with information on how ASM can help them.
“We are trying to find groups that we haven’t reached out to in the past and groups that aren’t directly related with ASM,” Chief of Staff David Gardner said.
Alex Brousseau, Chair of the ASM Constitutional Board, also addressed the process of drafting the new ASM Constitution.
Brousseau, who is also The Badger Herald’s Editorial Board chair, said the document posted online is not a final draft and the board is open to feedback from ASM members and students.
Legislative Committee Chair Hannah Somers also presented a report regarding the Nuisance Party Ordinance.
Somers reported committee members will be meeting with Mayor Paul Soglin and the Madison Police Department Monday to discuss the upcoming Mifflin Street Block Party.
