Members of the student government approved an exception to a major rule prohibiting door-to-door soliciting in residence halls to allow a voter registration group to go inside student housing properties.

The moratorium would allow members of the Madison Student Vote Coalition, a non-partisan organization, to go door-to-door in University of Wisconsin residence halls and register students to vote. The moratorium passed on a vote of 12-2.

UW freshman Alia Murphy, representative of Cole Hall on the university’s Residence Hall Advisory Board, said although the majority of the board was in favor of implementing the proposal, Director of Housing Paul Evans rejected it.

Murphy said other college campuses that have implemented programs such as this have seen very positive feedback. She added thousands of new voters registered at other campuses after sending representatives into housing dorms to register students to vote.

She said housing directors on the advisory board raised concerns regarding privacy, including the prevalence of strangers wandering in the hallways and around the residence hall buildings.

Associated Students of Madison Rep. David Vines said Evans immediately shut down the proposal by a unilateral veto without a student vote.

“This is honestly almost more about shared governance and the ability for students to have a say,” Vines said. “This is honestly much bigger than just voter registration.”

Vines said if the residents on the advisory board had the chance to actually vote on this and they gave MSVC the proper implementation time, they had plans to work closely with administration to implement safe and student-friendly policies.

ASM Shared Governance Chair Sam Seering said the issue of safety and the idea that this is a non-partisan effort are both very important.

“They [MSVS] are highly trained and have been working on these efforts for months,” Seering said.

He said Hannah Somers, as the head of MSVS, only works with individuals who would respect people’s privacy and would not endanger the safety of those in housing.

Vines said now they will try to meet with people in the administration to try and move forward with the moratorium.

Director of Classified Human Resources Mark Walters and Director in the Office of Human Resources Steve Lund came to the meeting yesterday to present information about the university’s Human Resources Design proposal to Student Council.

Walters said they are going to various stakeholder groups, like ASM, to present their current strategic plan to talk about it and get feedback from them.

Walters said their presentation was not meant to put forward policies and procedures, but was meant to be a general framework of the new structure and the various aspects of it.

Following the presentation, members of external groups came to speak in open forum to express their concerns with the current HR redesign proposal.

UW graduate student and teaching assistant Eleni Schirmer said the current proposal is not specific enough to address problems on campus.

Laura Peterson from AFSCME Local171 also raised concerns with the proposal regarding how it would be implemented and what it would mean for employees and blue-collar workers.