Chair Brandon Williams introduces ASM

http://http://vimeo.com/14762087

Vice chair Adam Johnson introduces ASM

Chancellor Biddy Martin emphasized the importance of the University of Wisconsin gaining more independence to decide important issues like tuition increases to a student government group Wednesday night.

Martin spoke to the Associated Students of Madison Student Council at their first meeting of the semester.

Martin said UW needs to have more autonomy from the state if UW is to thrive as a university.

“We need to show the state of Wisconsin we can add a lot more value, even more than we already add, but we cannot do it if our hands are tied behind our back,” Martin said, speaking about the Board of Regents’ and the state’s authority over the university.

UW cannot control its own purchasing, manage its own building projects nor set its tuition independently from the rest of the UW System, Martin added.

Martin said there are few public universities that have more restraints on them than UW does.

Academic Affairs Chair Carl Fergus asked if UW would face a backlash from the state if they asked for more autonomy. He added the state could simply say they will give UW more independence at the expense of less funding.

Martin agreed there was the chance of such a response, but added they would never make a deal which would cut a large amount of funds.

Dean of Students Lori Berquam also spoke at the meeting about ASM’s important role of inviting other students to join in discussions about how to improve UW.

She added ASM is a great forum for students to come together and create a marketplace of ideas.

Additionally, ASM Chair Brandon Williams presented his Strategic Plan for the session, which contained the goals of all of the ASM different committees.

Williams said he hoped the plan would help guide ASM as they worked throughout the semester and would be a good way to judge how well they accomplished their goals at the end of the session.

“When I ran for chair of ASM I said I would be the axel of the wheel holding the spokes in place and now is the time to turn the wheels in ASM and get stuff done,” Williams said.

The council also voted to amend the ASM constitution to extend Student Judiciary justices’ terms to four years.

The constitution currently limits the justices’ terms to two years, but does not address whether they can run for re-elections, according to Chief Justice Kathryn Fifield.

She added in the past justices would either ignore the term limit or leave before two years was up.

During the debate over the amendment, Representative Cale Plamann said there seemed to be a common worry over holding justices accountable if they are elected to serve four-year terms.

Fifield said they have internal ways of impeaching a justice if they are not performing their duties and added Student Council can also remove a member with a three-fourths majority vote.

“We are appointed to do a review of all of you, I would hope you would trust us to do a good review of ourselves,” Fifield said.

Williams said the amendment will have to be passed again next week by the council and then approved by students at the next elections.