With questions of representatives’ partisan leanings up for debate, members of the new student government voted in a new set of leaders for the new session.
In an appointments meeting spanning nearly nine hours, the Associated Students of Madison elected Allie Gardner as chair and Beth Huang as vice chair of Student Council for the body’s eighteenth session.
Gardner, a newcomer to ASM, said although she possesses less institutional knowledge of Student Council, she comes to the body with a different skill set gained through her prior membership in Student Labor Action Coalition and Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group.
She also highlighted the need for broad and overarching goals for all ASM committees to pursue because the purpose of the body is to develop effective ways to best serve students.
“Council can’t be effective if we’re only addressing internal affairs,” Gardner said. “I also feel we’re a little behind other UW System schools in shared governance. If we’re called the flagship university then we should be leading in shared governance.”
Gardner, who ran unopposed, was elected the chair of the eighteenth session with a vote of 28 in favor and three abstentions.
Johnny Koremenos and Beth Huang were nominated to serve as vice chair of Student Council.
Huang, a University of Wisconsin sophomore, ran for the position on a platform of increasing issue-specific outreach to student groups and the implementation of a newly revamped shared governance plan.
“There’s currently a lot of bureaucracy that makes [ASM] hard for students to navigate,” she said. “One major issue with external affairs is we’re not able to connect shared governance committee meetings with student organizations’ initiatives.”
Representatives questioned Huang’s assurance of promoting transparency as vice chair when it was revealed Huang and Gardner, along with other members who ran for election on a shared governance slate, had held a closed meeting last Thursday.
Huang maintained the meeting focused on evaluating the success of election tactics, which she said could benefit the ways ASM approaches outreach with the student body in the future.
Koremenos, the newly elected chair of UW College Republicans, said he anticipates the body as being highly divided on major issues in the new session.
To help foster an inclusive environment, he said he would work to promote the council as a place for civil debate and his personal political leanings would not interfere with his work as vice chair.
While debate on the nominations painted Koremenos and Huang as nearly ideological opposites, both candidates vowed to forfeit their vice chair stipends if elected.
Huang won the seat by a 10-vote margin.
After discussion on a number of issues, including the approval of the regular fall Student Council meeting schedule, lagged on with little consensus, committee chairs were approved as members curtailed time for questions and debate on nominations.
Tangela Roberts, who assumed the mantle of diversity chair for the last two months, received heavy endorsement from council members before being appointed through unanimous consent.
The newly elected University Affairs Chair, Sade Johnson, was unanimously voted into the position after she said she would continue to address diversity on the committee, which she said continues to be a campus-wide issue instead of one tied solely to diversity groups.
