During their Wednesday meeting, the Associated Students of Madison Coordinating Council outlined ways students can work on informing students about the budget.
Over the course of the next few weeks, various public discussion forums on the major cuts to the university’s funding in the biennial budget will be held around the UW campus for faculty, staff and students.
“We want to make sure we’re remaining non-partisan,” Legislative Affairs Chair Tom Gierok said. “We’ve reached out to partisan [and other] organizations on campus. We’re talking about what other organizations could provide and what they’re best at.”
Rules Committee Chair Sean Owczarek said he would like to see information regarding the budget more digestible for students.
“I’d like to make some kind of ‘Buzzfeed-style’ infographics about the budget, [which] could help people digest information,” he said.
Over the course of the next few weeks, there will be open discussion with Chancellor Rebecca Blank and other administrators about the budget, ASM Chair Genevieve Carter said.
Upcoming forums include ones this Thursday and Friday.
“Even though I do think we should be facilitating entirely student-run spaces, I do think it’ll be a good opportunity to ask very direct questions about what the objectives are going to be,” Carter said.
ASM is also supporting the TAA in its efforts to campaign against the potential budget cuts. That includes a letter-writing campaign where students and teaching assistants can write to lawmaker.
“The idea would be to combine that with writing letters to the editor in the local community,” Owczarek said. “I know for a fact that there’s a Facebook event that says ASM is doing this … I imagine that a letter-writing campaign might be a good thing to have.”
The Common Council also discussed bylaw revisions of the ASM Green Fund.
“We’re looking at a timeline and at the bylaws, and 2016 is going to be a little different,” Sustainability Committee Chair Kyla Kaplan said. “We want to make sure we take our time and we’re really specific with detail. We’re hoping to be able to work collaboratively with different people who really want to give input, people who want to see this fund be as successful as it can be. We want it to be more of a collaborative effort.”
