The Badger Herald Editorial Board's recent article entitled "Stop the Wage War" is full of misrepresentations and platitudes. Firstly, the Editorial Board downplays the electoral success of the student living wage initiative. While acknowledging the initiative's success in the fall of 2006, they fail to mention the success of the initiative in the two prior ASM elections. In fact, the initiative passed overwhelmingly, in three consecutive elections, with the Spring 2006 election having the highest student turnout in ASM history.

The technicalities that "invalidated" the Spring 2006 election were the result of DoIT's inability to sustain record high student vote numbers in the online election. The number of faulty votes was nonetheless smaller than the initiative's margin of victory.

Secondly, the Editorial Board claims that student employees are in no need of higher wages. Every student knows that the cost of tuition is skyrocketing. Even though most students are not supporting a family — although it is important to note that some students do have that burden — the ever-increasing cost of education makes a part-time job of $10.23 per hour a necessary and helpful drop in the bucket towards paying for tuition.

Thirdly, the claim that student wages should be based off of the free market is bogus, since the major employment units on campus are subsidized by students' tuition money. These large employment units are already outside the free market exactly because they are subsidized by students' tuition money.

Fourthly, the Editorial Board lauds Chancellor Wiley for creating the Student Wage Committee while ignoring the fact, brought up by the two ASM representatives, the committee is made up mostly of the administrators of the largest employment units on campus, with only two spots for students. Basic shared governance rules are not being upheld.

Students have the right to demand that their own tuition money not be used against them in making student workers second-class workers. The fact is that student employees are cheaper for the large campus employment units than unionized employees. The Chancellor's own recently-enacted LTE policy, which converts all campus limited-term employees to full-time union represented employees, is undermined when campus employers choose to replace unionized workers with student workers. If student employees are paid a living wage, then the large campus employment units will be less likely to use student employees at the expense of unionized employees.

The student living wage is a win-win situation for student and non-student campus workers, and it is perfectly acceptable for the two ASM representatives to criticize the make-up of the committee and demand a committee with representation from student employees and campus labor unions. Their demand that student employees, in an election administered by ASM, choose fellow student workers to represent them on the committee is absolutely necessary. An election would ensure the most democratic and objective voice for student employees on the committee.

Phoebe Taurick
ASM L&S Representative
Eric Sklarsky
UW-Madison Sophmore