Since its inception, ASM has been plagued by partisan bickering, to the detriment of the student voice. In a sense, the constant infighting has relegated ASM to a position at the sidelines of many important student issues. In the process, ASM’s relevance to student issues has so atrophied in the minds of those students that more than 85 percent of those eligible to vote fail to see the importance of even participating. Third Wave Slate is seeking to stem the tide of this growing irrelevance, which threatens 40,000 student voices.
One of the first steps in reestablishing ASM as a relevant tool for improving the overall education at UW is to return its focus to campaigns seeking to impact the issues that are most significant to the student body. Within this context of returning ASM attention to student matters, the Third Wave Slate wishes to focus on three primary areas:
Student Campaigns: This should be the heart of ASM consideration. ASM course evaluations provide an excellent example of the student campaigning we wish to return to the forefront of ASM issues, as well as the imbalance within student government that Third Wave wishes to address. While the original intent of this campaign was a good one, it has failed to realize the goal of providing students with an accurate and helpful description of the strengths and weaknesses of instructors and courses. This campaign has been neglected to the point of leaving the students with a flawed and ultimately useless program. We, the Third Wave Slate, want to return this potentially deep resource to control and use by the student body.
Our candidates represent a coalition not beholden to any one political ideology or agenda; we represent broad-based political thought from both sides of the spectrum. This broad-based coalition has come together with a simple, fundamental purpose in mind; we seek to establish student values that transcend politics as the primary focus of the Associated Students of Madison.
Once elected, Third Wave candidates will lobby and work with other members of student government to return relevance to this and other potentially useful student campaigns.
Campus Atmosphere: A fundamental area of student government jurisdiction should be the atmosphere of the campus — nothing directly affects that atmosphere so much as the safety of the campus. We are justly proud of the UW campus for the reputation it has already attained as a relatively safe school — we only desire to maintain and even improve this reputation. One way in which this could be done would be to expand the SAFEride program. Asking students to wait until 1 a.m. to be escorted safely back to their homes is unrealistic — if these hours could be extended, an important contribution to the overall safety, and thus the overall atmosphere of campus, could be made. Once elected, Third Wave candidates will lobby and work with other members of student government to expand the hours of SAFEride.
Depoliticizing the Student Budget: This speaks directly to the problems that have been long associated with ASM. All too frequently, a majority, left-leaning or right-leaning, gains control of student government and, without thought to the wishes of the student body at large, seeks to implement its vision for funding of student organizations. In the upcoming election, the future of segregated fees will be decided; keep them and reform them, or remove them altogether. We feel that it is understandable that students have lost faith in a system which has not worked well once in nine years — we are offering the solace that if elected with the opt-out system rejected, the status quo of segregated fees will not be maintained.
Third Wave would lobby and work with other members of student government to make a constitutional amendment which requires the adoption of a fixed budget the semester before funding decisions are to be made. This would make the decisions a matter of whether or not the money was available for a specific program, rather than whether or not that program was currently in favor with the party in power. Furthermore, this is simply good business sense — it allows foresight and planning that cannot be pursued within the current ambiguous system.
Since its beginning, ASM has been dominated by people in two schools of thought: those who are blind to the advantages it brings and want to simply cut everything and undo ASM completely, and those who are too caught up in defending it as a whole and its constitutionality to acknowledge the systemic flaws that desperately need to be addressed for ASM to succeed. The Third Wave will be the alternative to these groups; we recognize the weakness of the current system of student government that must be addressed and come to the table with effective solutions. We, the Third Wave Slate, are proud of UW and only wish to improve even further in those areas of direct relevance to students while increasing the value of every student’s experience here in Madison.
Peter McCabe and Jeremy Kedziora are UW Seniors. They are co-chairs of the Third Wave Slate for ASM Elections and can be reached at [email protected].