For the next 28 years, every UW-Madison student will pay $96 per semester, totaling about $800 to $1,000 per education, for a new Union South and for Memorial Union renovations. Cumulatively, the students' contribution to the Union project amounts to nearly $100 million, not including tens of millions of additional dollars in interest payments on the bonds necessary to finance construction.
Promising ""students would have control over every
aspect of the project and ownership of the final results,"" the
Wisconsin Union's Student Union Initiative
(http://unionvote.wisc.edu) campaigned for student votes endorsing
this fee increase in 2005 and 2006. Student control was ensured, at
least in part, by a further pledge that a student-majority Design
Committee would steer the design process. This collaborative,
shared governance committee would consist of both Union and ASM
student appointees, as well as faculty members, Union staff and
UW-Madison alumni.
In October 2006, students ultimately voted in favor of
the Student Union Initiative by an almost two to one margin. The
Design Committee members were soon selected from a campus-wide pool
of applicants. Between November 2006 and May 2009, these
individuals spent hundreds of hours reviewing student surveys,
responding to architectural concepts and debating everything from
green building goals to the type of exterior material. The mark of
Design Committee members and so many other dedicated individuals
who participated in the process is unmistakably evident in such
critical features as the building's exterior style that embraces
natural materials like Wisconsin stone rather than concrete, food
service based around individual restaurant concepts rather than a
food court, and a mixture of meeting spaces
targeted to better accommodate services requested by the campus
community.
While the Design Committee format ensured student
representation and involvement, it also brought transparency to
what is otherwise a largely closed process. Committee meetings were
not only open to the public, but the public was also usually
invited to share their thoughts and ideas. Design concepts
presented at these meetings were also posted online for further
review and comment. Unfortunately, all posts to the official
project blog, along with associated comments, were recently deleted
in an effort to ""clean up the website,"" meaning it is now
difficult to find much online information about the
project.
Regrettably, the Design Committee has not met since the
end of the spring 2009 semester. At that point, design of the
building itself was essentially complete, leaving significant
decisions only for the furniture, fixtures and equipment.
Recognizing the challenge summer poses to organizing a consistent
group of students, Union leadership including Union Director Mark
Guthier, Union Associate Director Hank Walter and myself put
together a plan for an interim summer Design Committee that would
preserve the student majority and seek to maintain as much
continuity in membership as possible. Regular updates were also to
be sent to Design Committee members and other individuals active in
the project, and the current Union vice president for project
management was to present a report on plans for the Design
Committee during the first Union Council meeting of the fall
semester—this report has yet to be made. Union Council, the
institution's governing board, endorsed this strategy at its May
2009 meeting.
A July e-mail from Union leadership thanked those
individuals involved in the summer design furniture process and
informed them the project would be taking a new direction based on
a smaller group of decision makers. The Wisconsin Union has since
rejected multiple private and public requests to remedy the
situation by either reinstating the Design Committee or finding an
alternative to ensure adequate student representation and
oversight.
In defense of their actions, Union officials attempt to
cite language in the Student Union Initiative's Design Committee
promise, saying the committee ""will continue to meet until
construction begins."" Anyone who has recently passed the Union
South site could affirm construction is well under way. This
argument, however, fails to account for the reality that
construction of state building projects does not begin until design
is complete, unless a project receives a rarely granted waiver to
hire a construction-manager-at-risk. The Union project received
such a waiver in 2008, thereby significantly altering the project's
course. Construction officially commenced on this project when it
received state Building Commission approval in February 2009, at
which point the building's interior design was just
beginning.
The Union further argues both that student involvement
still exists in the form of the Wisconsin Union Directorate (WUD),
the institution's student programming board, and that the project
is now transitioning to evaluating how the new building will be
used. These arguments ignore the fundamental issue—students
presently have no accountable representation on a project funded
with $100 million of student fees.
In securing the student vote for the $100 million
necessary to fund this project, the Student Union Initiative
promised to create a Design Committee to steer the design process.
The design process is not complete, so where is the Design
Committee?
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