It took more than 400 lines of new bylaws, rules and definitions, but the Associated Students of Madison have fully drafted an initial version of proposals aimed at ending a court battle that has lasted more than four years.
\It's not a minor change,"" ASM Chair Mike Dean said of the proposed revisions. ""We focused on three things: the appeal process, taping the meetings to have a better record and the criteria on how we allocate the money.""
The ASM Student Council, Monday, gave its unanimous initial approval to the proposal, which must be ratified again at a meeting later this week. The proposal, after making its way through the state attorney general's office and University of Wisconsin System lawyers, must be submitted to U.S. District Court Judge John Shabaz before the scheduled court hearing on Feb. 14.
Shabaz's decision in Kendra Fry vs. the Regents of the University of Wisconsin on Dec. 8 required the UW System to reform how it allocates student fees in accordance with the court's ruling that all financial decisions must be made in a viewpoint-neutral manner.
The most radical changes will be in the appeals and allocation procedures, Dean said.
Under the new bylaws, all financial decisions may be appealed through to the chancellor's office. Formerly, all appeals ended at the Student Judiciary level.
The process by which student service groups are selected to receive funds from ASM has been altered and broken down into two separate hearings. The first hearing would be used to determine the eligibility of the group to receive funds. The second would decide how much funding, if any, each group would receive.
To ensure that ASM does not operate with the ""unbridled discretion"" of which Shabaz warned in his decision, the council implemented a strict set of rules to check the system. One such rule requires that members of any ASM committee that ""knowingly, willfully and intentionally"" makes a non-viewpoint-neutral decision ""be subject to firing, impeachment or removal of all offices and positions held in ASM.""
Dean added that the proposal was still in its infancy, reiterating that the strict time schedule--a 90-day deadline--hurried the committee.
""This is by no means the final, final version,"" Dean said. ""This is the best proposal that we could put together to make the procedure viewpoint neutral. There's going to be tinkering in the practicality issues.""
According to ASM Shared Governance Committee Chair Jessy Tolkan, though the finalized version of the new amendments was not made available to the council until Saturday, the ideas have been floating around for a long time.
""All of these things make our system better,"" she said. ""The basic concepts have been out there for quite some time.""
Most council members don't believe Judge Shabaz will agree with ASM's proposal.
""I don't expect him to accept the changes. The fact of the matter is though, he can't by law destroy the system ... if it is viewpoint-neutral and I believe it is,"" Dean said.
