Fourteen newly elected Associated Students of Madison representatives for next year's Student Council session, which starts May 1, promised five reform commitments to the UW-Madison student body Sunday.
ASM must reform its internal structure in order to increase its capacity to work on campus issues and regain legitimacy,"" the ASM representatives wrote in a statement.
The five commitments include focusing on quality of higher education at UW-Madison, changing bylaws so Student Council approves all ASM campaigns, creating a press office for public relations, forming a time frame to implement a presidential system to create a Student Body President, and implementing a budget cap for ASM expenditures.
Although many of the representatives said the reform agenda is not in response to the poor attendance of the April 15 ""State of the ASM"" address, Jeff Wright, one of next year's Student Council representatives, said it ""expedited [ASM's] timeline for publicizing these reforms and communicating them to students.""
""I think ASM right now is out of touch with students,"" Wright said, adding the reforms aim to make ASM more accountable and accessible to students as a forum for discussion.
""I don't think we have that right now and I would argue that we haven't had that for some time,"" he said.
""ASM has been lacking in legitimacy for awhile,"" Student Council member Alex Gallagher said. ""We've had trouble recognizing our failures for quite some time.""
Jessica Pavlic, another representative, said having a president to act as the head of ASM is ""a step in the right direction"" to get more voter participation in ASM elections, which she called ASM's biggest obstacle.
""The biggest issue facing ASM is its alienation from the student body,"" said Jennifer Brody, a first-time ASM representative.
""I think the biggest problem facing ASM right now is it has very low capacity to get things done,"" Gallagher said. ""We've really overextended ourselves having lots of different committees working on lots of different mini-campaigns and as a result, we fail to concentrate our efforts on a couple central issues that are outlined by ASM Student Council.""
Wright said the five-point plan will be at the top of next year's agenda with other reform ideas.
""We have a working coalition of students who are capable of making those changes,"" he said. ""I think next year's going to be a very important one. If we can't make these changes next year, I'm hesitant to say that they could ever happen.
