Unsurprisingly, The Badger Herald Editorial Board wrote a detailed defense of the new Associated Students of Madison Constitution in last week’s paper, as well an an attack on those who oppose it. This is perhaps the clearest indication that the new document is not worth supporting.
In the piece, the board correctly identifies the current ASM as a lackluster organization out of touch with the general student body. This much is plainly obvious. The board goes wrong, however, in pointing to the current structure of ASM — specifically its “bottom-up allocation of responsibility” — as the source of its current dysfunction. According to their critique, ASM would benefit from the proposed changes by creating a top-down presidential system in which most power and responsibility is placed in the hands of an executive.
The Vote No Coalition rejects the notion that a centralization of power is the remedy to ASM’s current woes. A strong president would strip students of their collective voice and create an authoritarian system that will likely result in cronyism and patronage. It would also create a more bureaucratic system for student funding that will backlog the entire process and jeopardize the allocation of segregated fees for student organizations.
ASM is currently structured as a democratic, grassroots organization designed to run political campaigns on student issues. This structure has historically acted quite effectively. ASM has a proud record of successfully mobilizing students for lower tuition, sweatshop-free labor, socially responsible investment and many other issues. The new constitution would effectively destroy this structure by turning it upside down; the driving force for political change will no longer be with the student body and ASM grassroots committees, but with a powerful executive largely unaccountable to its constituents.
Because ASM is currently lacking in elected representatives with an activist mindset, the organization has faltered to the point of irrelevance. We recognize that change is needed in ASM — not in its structure, but in its current representation. For this reason, the Vote No Coalition will remain committed to remaking our student government into an effective, accountable body after the constitution referendum. Our intention is to return ASM to its activist roots and once again make our student government into a body that actually serve the interests of the student body.
The board concludes its piece by attempting to scare its readers into voting for the constitution by associating the opposition exclusively with “a scrappy assortment of socialist and antiwar organizations.” This claim would be laughable if it weren’t so intentionally misleading. Unlike the pro-constitution side, the Vote No Coalition is comprised of a large and diverse group of students. Its endorsing organizations include the Teaching Assistants’ Association, Prevention Awareness and Victim Empowerment, Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow, Campus Women’s Center, Multicultural Student Coalition, Sex Out Loud, Student Labor Action Coalition and many others. What unites these groups is the recognition that the new Constitution will only limit the student voice and not address the current problems with ASM.
The dangers of the new constitution are the principal fuel for the Vote No Coalition’s momentum. We are asking the student body to vote against it on Feb. 23-24 online at http://asm.wisc.edu.
Zach Riley-Glassman ([email protected]) is the finance coordinator for the Campus Women’s Center.
