In a meeting that struggled to make quorum, Associated Students of Madison representatives were unable to make much progress beyond planning which of the recent campus issues to deal with in upcoming gatherings.
Starting out the assembly, ASM representative and UW-Madison senior Alex Clark made short mention of the sexual harassment issue, which has gained more focus lately with the return of Paul Barrows to his backup position of senior administrative programming specialist to the provost. This discussion, while short-lived, touched upon the idea of engineering different projects that would serve to better inform students of sexual harassment issues.
Quickly shifting topics, representative Andrew Gordon, a UW-Madison freshman, called for debate on how best to approach the new policy of contacting the parents of students involved in underage drinking incidents. The policy, introduced last week, affects underage drinkers who receive multiple offenses, or students whose drinking causes them to be transported to detoxification centers.
Questioning the legality of the policy, Gordon said, \Regardless to the legality of the issue, it still seems pretty clear that it's not the right thing to do.""
General disapproval of the measure was evident throughout the representative body, though no official vote was taken, as no measure was proposed at the time.
The meeting then continued with committees, academic affairs, campus relations, diversity, finance, legislative affairs and various special committees giving reports on their status. A number of the committees have upcoming events, such as the campus relations committees' Halloween forum, which takes place next Thursday. However, the majority of reports reveal the groups remain in the process of getting members involved and organizing goals for the semester.
At the end of the scheduled agenda, the conversation returned to how ASM would attempt to approach the issue of the administration contacting parents. Gordon continued to be the main proponent of a strong reaction. Regarding what such a reaction would be, he said that it remained ""something we're still exploring, to see what kind of response we can mount.""
Though the idea of such a response was met with enthusiasm, the paucity of attendees present required the issue to be tabled to a future meeting.
