On March 27 you quote Vice Chancellor Bazzell in the article UW leaders question LTE wage plan\ as warning students that the proposed ""Living Wage"" initiative would eliminate student control over funding for general student services such as University Health Services and the student unions. Bazzell goes on to say that should the initiative pass, Chancellor Wiley will assume control over funding for general student services.
Bazzell could not be more wrong. If war was peace and day was night, perhaps he might be right that shared governance is administrative fiat. Yet Wisconsin law is clear that ""students shall have primary responsibility for the formulation and review of policies concerning student life, services and interests."" Wis. Stat. § 35.09(5). The law, together with UW policy, also makes clear that the chancellor's role in student seg fee allocation is consultative, not executive, and that students, not the administration, are responsible for drafting budgets and policies relating to the disbursement of funds for student services. Thus the phrase, ""student fee autonomy.""
It seems unlikely that Bazzell's statement was made out of ignorance of the law. However, whatever his motivations for making it, the statement was irresponsible, coming as it does at the moment students vote on the living wage proposal. Students should go to the polls knowing that their vote on the proposed living wage initiative, whether up or down, is an exercise of the kind of student power enshrined in state law. The decision belongs to you, not the administration.
Ben Manski
Attorney at Law\
