Chair Brandon Williams introduces ASM

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

Vice chair Adam Johnson introduces ASM

The average University of Wisconsin student could pay off their tuition with $50,000 dollars, the amount of money the UW student government must make decisions on in the near future.

The student government must decide what it is going to do with an extra $50,000, a remnant of a 17-year-old fund.

The money comes from the ASM Foundation, a fund created with leftover money from the former student government, Wisconsin Student Association, ASM Chair Brandon Williams said.

The fund’s original purpose was to be a reserve for ASM to be used in situations when students’ segregated fees could not be used, like for hiring a lawyer in a suit against the university, Vice Chair Adam Johnson said.

The ASM Foundation is currently without any board members since the last two members’ time on the board expired this August, Williams said.

Johnson said their first step is to appoint an intern to recruit student members to join the board because neither he nor Williams had time to handle the project on top of their other duties.

“We want the board to be put back together and then for the board to decide what the money will be used for,” Williams said.

Johnson said one option for the money would be to create a scholarship fund that could be given out by one of ASM’s committees.

Williams also announced at the meeting he will be participating in a ride-along with the UW Police Department in the near future.

He said one of the initiatives he wanted to work on as chair was campus safety, and by going along for the ride he could see where UWPD was spending their time when they are out on patrol on campus.

“If they’re spending the majority of their time raiding bars I’ll be a little concerned they are not doing enough to make sure the streets are safe,” Williams said.

ASM also approved several travel grants for student organizations at the meeting, including some for groups traveling out of the country.

Student Services Finance Committee Chair Matt Manes said the council should approve the travel grants because they were already approved by the Finance Committee, and the chair of the committee said the requests were reasonable.

He added he does not like meddling in the other committee’s affairs.

Academic Affairs Chair Carl Fergus said he would vote to approve the grants because they were already approved, but he had concern with student funds being used for international travel.

Fergus also went over the results of the recent ASM textbook swap at the meeting.

He said, altogether, the event was more successful than previous semesters.

He added the students dropped off 1,793 books and sold back 525 books, both of which were higher numbers than last semester’s totals.

“We saved students $11,412 dollars off book prices off of Amazon,” Fergus said. “This number would be even higher if we used prices from the University Bookstore.”

Fergus was also pleased because several books had three different textbook swap stickers, which means students have been coming back to use the service.