The Associated Students of Madison voted Wednesday to allocate $9,000 to create a tenant-rating website and a board of directors to oversee it.
Ald. Eli Judge, District 8, who was appointed to the board, compared the website idea to the popular Rate My Professors website.
""The hope here is to make sure students never have a landlord they don't like,"" Judge said.
The board of directors will consist of four at-large seats and three ASM-appointed seats.
Scott Resnick, who was also appointed to the board, predicted it would take 14 weeks to get the site up and running.
In an effort to keep reform alive after the failure of the proposed new constitution, members of Student Council wrote a resolution to create a committee to review and propose changes to bylaws. Student Council voted it down as written, but according to ASM Media Specialist Claire Lempke, the council may take up the resolution again at its next meeting.
The original resolution called for a combination of Student Council members, GSSF organization leaders and at-large members.
""I think we need to keep going with the spirit of reform,"" Legislative Affairs Committee Chair Kevin Ott said.
Ott said he hoped the committee would use the work of the Constitutional Committee to propose changes to the bylaws.
Before voting down the resolution, Student Council voted to amend it to remove the GSSF group leaders from the committee.
""Since GSSF groups are service providers, not constituent servers, I don't think it would be appropriate for GSSF groups to be guaranteed seats,"" Student Council Representative Kurt Gosselin said. ""By giving certain seats to GSSF leaders, we're saying that GSSF leaders are more valuable than other students on campus.""
Student Council members argued that reform could be made without creating a new committee.
""We don't know what the students want us to be doing or how we should be doing it,"" Student Council Representative Dakota Kaiser said. ""I think we need to look back at our mission. I don't think that having another committee addressing a limited section of the bylaws is the answer to it.""
