I am writing in response to a Badger Herald article (?UWM newspaper subject to new speech codes,? Feb. 15) about the ill-advised legislation passed by the UW-Milwaukee Student Association Senate ? UW-Milwaukee?s student government. Essentially, the legislation, titled the SA Sedition Act, was written in response to factually incorrect and manufactured stories about certain UW-Milwaukee Student Association members.

The Sedition Act was poorly written, and, as shown by the lack of support at the veto-override session, it was killed in the student Senate. The UW-Milwaukee Senate realized, after the fact, that it was unconstitutional and took measures to ensure the First Amendment right to free speech was preserved.

Toward the end of the article, Badger Herald reporter Amelia Vorpahl quoted the Associated Students of Madison Chair Gestina Sewell as saying, ?Being a part of any government organization always comes with a certain amount of criticism, however, you shouldn?t let that stand in the way of doing your job.?

After reviewing the work that ASM has done this year, and in years past, a question came to mind: What exactly is your job? And, if you can define your job, Ms. Sewell, can you say that you have performed to the best of your ability?

At UW-Milwaukee, the Student Association has taken a lot of heat from our school newspaper, Chancellor Carlos Santiago, top-level administrators and even groups of students involved in our decisions. Why do we get so much bad press and extreme pressure from the administration to tone it down? It?s because we do our job. Despite what the UWM Post and upper-level administrators ? who have financial interests in what we do ? think about it, we accomplish our goals and do so in a systematic and viewpoint-neutral manner.

It should be noted that the Student Association lowered tuition for UW-Milwaukee students for next year. We have decreased funding and discontinued staff positions we deemed unnecessary and started cleaning up the waste left by SAS members of the past. We lowered the union budget, the Office of Student Life budget and have de-funded resources after conducting thorough usage studies.

Additionally, we reduced the dependence by student organizations on those same budgets. By doing all of this, we lowered the cost of tuition and got one step closer to freeing the students of UW-Milwaukee from the shackles of segregated fees ? the UW System?s socialized tax program.

We have accomplished exactly what we campaigned on: lowering segregated fees, being fiscally responsible and cutting the size of student government to make it more manageable. I encourage Ms. Sewell and the rest of ASM to stop worrying about ?burning bridges because of bad press? and start working toward doing what they were elected to do: fight for UW students and lower segregated fees.

UWM Student Association

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