It’s not what you do, but who knows what you do that matters.

It’s a lesson the Associated Students of Madison could apply more often. I’ve often criticized them of irrelevance and complacency, but they do actually do things. Whether they accomplish anything is a point of debate, but they do not actually sit around in rooms and stare at each other. And if they do, they usually say things like “I reserve my right.”

ASM Chair Tyler Junger and Vice Chair Tom Templeton spent a fair amount of time ensuring the proposals for Madison Initiative funds are worthy of student tuition dollars. Student Services Finance Committee pours over applications for segregated fee funds to sort through a morass of complicated requirements and legal issues. And if you read The Badger Herald cover to cover, you probably know this. Of course, if that does describe you, you’re probably me. In which case, you are probably not sane.

But if you’re a normal student who found ASM while googling Snuggies or by being corralled into an ASM kickoff meeting, then you might be tempted to find out more information on their website.

If you’re looking for brief explanations of what ASM does, multiple colored fonts and what their schedule was a year and a half ago, you’re in luck. If, however, you’re looking for updated minutes, agendas, legislation or clear navigation, you might be waiting for awhile.

The Student Council site has some agendas, but all the minutes are missing. Student Judiciary hasn’t updated its case log since summer of 2009. None of the grassroots committees have minutes, agendas or even a cogent list of issues they deal with. (Other than Shared Governance, which has a blog updated infrequently and doesn’t include minutes of the full Shared Gov. body.) If it weren’t for the two financial committees’ explanation of what and whom they fund, you’d have to assume ASM took most of the fall semester off.

Ah, but someone had an answer for this problem. It was called the Press Office. The theory behind the Press Office was that ASM should have someone in charge of communicating all this information to the campus newspapers and the UW community at large.

In theory, it was a great idea. I’m sure it’d be a good one in practice too. I’ll admit Press Office Director Ken Harris (our former news editor) has done a much better job than the nearly nonexistent Press Office of last spring. The blog (asmvoice.wordpress.com) he set up has some pretty helpful live blogging of Student Council meetings and updates on several committee initiatives. The only problem is that there’s an actual website sitting there, without information, while a blog with up to date info is linked on a press page in small text. It’s sort of like trying to bail water out of a ship by using the lifeboats.

For what it’s worth, Harris noted a few unfortunate problems with ASM’s current system that’s prevented them from getting proper information to students. The webmaster is only paid for five hours a week; he isn’t paid well and he’s leaving. On top of that, his associate officers are only paid for eight hours a week and officers in ASM seem unsure of how to use the Press Office and where its services overlap with External Affairs. Those problems combined with the fact that one associate director has already quit leaves ASM with a broken PR arm.

While I’d love to see ASM finally get their act together, one part of Harris’ last press release indicates most of ASM still has a fundamental misunderstanding of how information is spread. In ASM’s DIY report card, they claim to mandate Student Council members “hold regular office hours at a known location every week.”

Let’s make it clear: This technically has been a mandate for awhile now, but ASM reaffirmed this in the middle of last semester. Given that this is not on the ASM website, blog or any Twitter feeds, I would ask: “Known location” to whom? ASM members? God?

Having had enough of bitching about ASM and not doing anything myself, I’m going to propose a challenge. I’ve already filed open record requests for all the minutes of Student Council, Finance Committee, Student Services Finance Committee, Shared Governance, Legislative Affairs, Academic Affairs, Diversity Committee and Student Activity Center Governing Board over the last semester. My plan is that once I get these requests, I will upload them to a website (for now we’ll stick with asmwatch.wordpress.com) for public perusal and comment. As the semester progresses, I’ll attempt to keep posting minutes and important documents as they happen. Eventually, we’ll just move these documents to the Herald site.

The challenge? I’d like to see if ASM can actually post their documents faster than I can. Frankly, they should be able to because requests take days or weeks whereas it should take them minutes. But regardless, if ASM takes the challenge seriously, we should all have an abundance of information for easy access.

And as for those SC office hours: Once they post the new hours (in purgatory, apparently) we’ll be sure to put their names, meeting places and times on the top of the opinion page. Let us know if someone doesn’t show up and we’ll be more than happy to call them out.

Jason Smathers ([email protected]) is a first-year graduate student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.