Newly elected representatives of Associated Students of Madison issued a release Sunday citing a five-point mission to improve ASM for the next academic year. The five goals range from the obvious—implementing a budget cap for ASM expenditures—to the elusively vague—focusing on “issues of higher education.”
After listing the five points, the release goes on to clarify that ASM as a whole has not committed yet. Hopefully the organization will at least adopt a set of similar goals, but members still face an uphill battle.
Their precedent is bleak: New representatives acknowledge that past sessions have failed to put together effective campaigns that address higher education, garner sufficient input from students and provide a viable forum for student issues.
A plan to repair the inadequacies of ASM is a nice idea, but it seems these new members are still operating partly within ASM’s current, ineffective structure. The third goal on the release is to “create a press office to handle public relations.” Perhaps it’s merely poor word choice, but “handle” is a very passive term, and PR must be proactive to be effective. Otherwise the press office would be working to respond to the problems it’s actually supposed to be fixing.
Regardless, the fourth goal—electing an ASM president—will likely promote the organization better than a press office ever would. Students—all students, not just those already involved in student government—need a face they can assign to ASM, as well as a significant election that will inspire them to vote.
As for the first objective, “[to] focus on issues of higher education, specifically those elements impacting the quality of education at UW-Madison,” there remains the question of what that point actually means. What are the issues of education impacting quality at UW-Madison, after all, when the whole institution is nothing if not an entity for higher education?
Of course, UW-Madison also has its share of researchers and branch organizations. But ASM is unable to affect those aspects anyway, necessarily making a focus on issues of higher education something implicit in student government already; otherwise it would not be doing its job.
It is a positive step for representatives-elect to want to make ASM more effective and to bolster student participation. But a lot of talk and less action is what has caused ASM problems in the first place. If the 15th-session members really want a new course to act upon—a way to get their organization’s act together—they must offer more descriptive goals and pursue them in a more effective manner than ASM has with many past proposals.
