Advocates of a petition to postpone the demolition of Union South spoke during open forum at the Associated Students of Madison meeting Wednesday, hoping ASM would take action to hold a student vote, but no ASM member motioned to add any agenda items pertaining to construction.
Hundreds of UW-Madison students signed the petition to stop construction on Union South until a new referendum could gather student opinion on the construction, due to complaints that the previous vote was undemocratic. The petition had 357 votes Wednesday night.
In fall of 2006, following two votes that were flawed with technical errors, students voted to move forward construction on a new south campus union, with a 6 percent voter turnout. Students who signed the petition argued that this turnout was not representative of the student population, and asked that another vote be held with a greater effort to turn out votes.
ASM Chair Brittany Weigand spoke against the initiative, standing by the legitimacy of the 2006 vote.
To say, 'Oh, we didn't like this, let's revote on it' would undermine ASM's legitimacy as a student government,"" she said.
ASM members and other students questioned the timing of the petition, arguing that a student vote would not be able to stop the project at this point.
Tyler Junger, the student who organized the petition, said the group's goal is to halt construction immediately, but that a vote would still be useful even if it was after the construction was underway.
""It wouldn't have a tangible effect, but it would allow students to wash their hands clean of it and say, 'Fine, you can take my money, but I don't support it,'"" Junger said.
Carl Fergus, a student in support of the petition, explained the timing.
""Before it wasn't done because honestly no one thought anything could be done,"" he said. ""No one spoke up. I think [Junger] is the first person to think that anything could happen, and that's why we're doing this now.""
After ASM did not add the issue to the agenda, Junger said they would be pursuing other options for postponing construction, including contacting state senators and the UW System Board of Regents.
""Our initiative doesn't end here,"" he said. ""ASM isn't the end-all, be-all,"" Junger said. ""We're going to be working as hard as we can to keep that building up until it's not a moot point.""
Daniel Cornelius, the Wisconsin Union vice president for project management, said postponing construction could up the project's cost by millions of dollars because commodity costs are so favorable with the current economy.
""It's good to have debate, but this decision was made two years ago,"" Cornelius said. ""We're going to be moving forward, full steam.""
After the meeting's open forum, members of ASM voted for a second time to approve a new constitution for the student government. Students will have the chance to vote on the constitution pending the Student Elections Commission's establishment of a special election for the constitution.
