The Student Council and Student Services Finance Committee will hold elections to fill several open and contested seats across the Associated Students of Madison.
The University of Wisconsin ASM will host its annual election for the two student-led administrative bodies on campus from March 8 to March 10. According to a new candidate matrix, 78 students are currently running for 33 spots.
There are open seats for all the schools on campus, with the College of Letters and Science having the most representation with 12 seats in the Student Council. Each student has seven votes and can only vote for representatives of the college they are a part of. Students will vote via an online ballot.
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UW sophomore and founder of BIPOC at Wisco Djamal Lylecyrus said he is running for a seat in the Student Council as a part of a Student Relief Squad — a group of students running for Student Council and SSFC seats that have a shared platform.
“We’re running on a platform of racial justice and equity, shared governance, transparent budgets, workers rights and compassionate COVID relief,” Lylecyrus said.
Lylecyrus said his main focus will be racial equity. After his experience founding BIPOC at Wisco, he realized wanted to be a part of creating change on campus. While he has helped bring attention to racial equity issues on campus, ASM has the power to take action to change university structures that encourage inequity. Lylecyrus is one of 30 other students who are running for the 12 seats for CLS.
Pratyusha Emkay, who is running for a seat on SSFC and as a representative of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, also mentioned diversity as a key issue for the next term — specifically within CALS.
“Looking at the faculty list in CALS, you can see that most of the people employed are white males … if the people who are in charge are mostly white males, how many other voices are not being heard,” Emkay said. “There’s a lot of other students, there are a lot of other backgrounds and a lot of different voices and knowledge to bring to the table.”
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According to the ASM candidate matrix, the most contested races include 30 students running for 12 seats in the CLS and 22 students running for four SSFC seats.
Additional contested races include five students running for two seats in CALS, three students running for two seats in the School of Business, three students running for one seat in the School of Education and five students running for three seats in the College of Engineering. and six students running for seven seats for the Graduate School.
Several other races are currently uncontested, including in the School of Human Ecology, the Graduate School, and the seat shared by the School of Nursing and School of Pharmacy, as well as in other open individual seats for the Professional Students and Special Students.
The online ballot will open Monday, March 8 at 8:00 a.m.
