After raising concerns that the divestment plan may marginalize students from countries that produce fossil fuels, the University of Wisconsin’s student government continued debate on the Boycott and Divestment Bylaws and heard a presentation on OpenBook Wisconsin Wednesday.

The Associated Students of Madison also reviewed changes to the Student Services Finance Committee’s Internal Budget and the Training Budget Transfer within ASM.

Divestment Bylaw

Reps. Lila Greenberg and Sarah Neibart said ASM’s passage of the Divestment Plan warrants clarified criteria as they proceed. They proposed creating a list of criteria on the premise of human rights violations to ensure that in the future, students would not be marginalized.

“I think this holds us to our principles, taking into account many different voices from our community,” Greenberg said.

The Student Council will vote on this proposed divestment bylaw change at its next meeting.

OpenBook Wisconsin

Martha Kerner, assistant vice chancellor for business services at the University of Wisconsin, conducted a presentation on OpenBook Wisconsin, a searchable website the Department of Administration created containing all state agency expenditures including operating expenses and travel costs.

Kerner said all UW expenditures are on the website, and it currently only has one of the three phases of data DOA hopes to have complete by the time the site is fully developed. Phase one, which is currently online, shows all the operating expenditures of the institutions within the UW System, she said.

However, all of the data is presented as single figures rather than broken down by individual school, Kerner said. Some of the data on this site is not entirely reliable, and work is being done to make the website more accurate, she said.

“We have all spent a lot of time on this campus trying to redact this misinformation, so that we can protect the confidentiality of our staff, our faculty and our students to the greatest degree,” she said.

Only two inquiries have been made on the site since it went live in January of this year, Kerner said.

She said the minimal amount of traffic was shocking to the DOA, but they expect traffic on the site to increase when the final two phases are complete.

The second phase would update employee salary, including the agency, class and gross pay of an individual in a certain fiscal year, Kerner said. The third phase would allow grants or other contracts including capital projects to appear on the website as well.

SSFC Internal Budget Approval and the ASM Training Budget Transfer

The Student Segregated Finance Committee Internal Budget change will cut out legal council and accountability liaisons.

The Training Budget Transfer will create an opportunity for future ASM leaders to receive comprehensive training from Angus Johnston about the statewide student organization, SSFC Chair David Vines said.

Correction: Changes have been made to this article to correctly convey the views of ASM representatives.