By now you've heard the news: Last week, Chancellor Biddy Martin refused to overrule the Student Service Finance Committee's (SSFC's) decision not to fund Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow (C-FACT) with student segregated fees. Since C-FACT had been denied seg. fees for procedural reasons -- their leadership was delinquent on the delivery of crucial funding paperwork -- Biddy saw no viewpoint-neutrality dilemma in denying funding.

If C-FACT can magically prove that SSFC sabotaged their funding process, I'll eat my words. But they can't, so I won't have to. Our chancellor is a liberal -- but not an ideologue and certainly not a moron. Biddy knows the UW needs another seg. fees lawsuit like Mel Gibson needs another drink. Had she the faintest doubt about SSFC's intentions, C-FACT would be cashing their $130,000+ check right now. As it stands, we will likely endure another dramatic District Court lawsuit, complete with banal platitudes from both sides.

Already I've received a rather terse press release from Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend). Money quotes:

"After seven years of providing funding to CFACT, it is another slap in the face to intellectual diversity on campus to leave only WISPIRG being funded," said Grothman. "On other campuses, such as the University of Minnesota, it would be the norm to fund both organizations or whereas the University of Michigan neither organization is funded."

"With the overwhelming leftward tilt of the university faculty, one would think Chancellor Martin would be especially sensitive to allowing student fees to fund disproportionate left-wing organizations as well. Apparently intellectual diversity must be stamped out whenever it rears its head," said Grothman.

Yes. And apparently Glenn Grothman believes that 'intellectual diversity' is so important that seg. fees should be extended even to conservative organizations who fail to cooperate with basic procedural norms necessary for a coherent funding process. C-FACT's lack of funds is their own damn fault, period.

And let me extend a final message -- a history lesson, really -- to those at C-FACT who are righteous with indignation right now: Before they start accusing the seg. fee system of inherent bias, and our UW administrators of culpability in viewpoint-neutrality violations, C-FACT should review some basic facts about seg. fees at UW-Madison:

It is, in the first place, vital for C-FACT to recognize a magnanimous irony -- that the UW System Board of Regents 1) does not like them at all, and 2) intentionally maintains a system of student-organization funding which assures them viewpoint-neutral treatment. The Rosenberger v. University of Virginia (1995) U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled that universities must maintain viewpoint-neutrality within their own student segregated-fee systems, since seg. fee systems are "limited public forums." Said the Court: "it does not follow... that viewpoint-based restrictions are proper when the University does not itself speak or subsidize transmittal of a message it favors but instead expends funds to encourage a diversity of viewpoints from private speakers."

So after Rosenberger, the UW could have said to hell with seg. fees and freed themselves from constitutional imperatives of their own creation. They didn't -- probably because most university administrators, as liberal as they are, recognize the need for self-constraining checks on these personal biases.

Do you follow me? If the University really had it out for C-FACT, it could simply scrap the segregated-fees system altogether and instead fund student organizations through its own monies. If administrators consider C-FACT conservative kooks who don't deserve a public forum -- if they (quite reasonably) question whether students' C-FACT internships will mean anything when Category 5 hurricanes are a weekly occurrence in the United States and New York is underwater -- it would be quick procedural work to guarantee they never receive another cent. Instead, UW has taken the opposite approach; they have preserved -- quite deliberately -- a system which guarantees that their anti-C-FACT bias never rules the day. And what has C-FACT done to repay this magnanimous gesture?

Well, they turned in their fucking paperwork late. And now they're getting exactly what they deserve. Better luck next cycle.

There's a little pet peeve I have for the networks covering the Iranian protests of the election that doesn't involve twitter. As much as I'd love to delve into that controversy revolving around CNN, I will save that for a later post after I've thought about the criticisms a little more.�

But I'll tell you one thing that pisses me off: Mispronunciation of the names involved.

Now the mispronunciation of Mir Hossein Mousavi (that's moo-sah-VEE, not moo-SAH-vee) is fairly understandable because it's a slight emphasis elsewhere and a bit unconventional for your average American in standard 24-hour news cycles. You might actually get it right once in awhile, but as you're speeding through tele-prompters and twitter-facebook feeds, you might flub it.

I'm a little less forgiving for the butchering of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.�

Come on. I know it's a little unwieldy, but you've had four years to get this right. And yet I still hear MSNBC reporters calling him "Achmach-Ach-may-Jad." That's pretty unforgivable. I guess McCain screws that one up too, but that's not really an excuse.

But there's one mispronounced name that actually is not only annoying but problematic for teaching Americans the history of what's going on in Iran.

Supreme Leader Khamenei.�

KAH-Meh-Nay. Not "Ka-MAY-Nee."

Why does it matter?�

Because the last supreme leader was Ayatollah Khomeini. Ko-MAY-Nee.

Now, maybe this is quibbling, but the two pronunciations can easily confuse the two if done wrong.�

Right pronunciation distinguished between the two.

Wrong pronunciation can make those whose only knowledge of Iran comes from the Simpsons think this is the same guy from the 70s, just with a grayer beard.

Now, scoff if you want and say that the American public isn't that dumb and the confusion isn't the problematic considering that it's just the same brand of Islamic dictator. But considering the fact that the populace under Khomeini bought into the idea of America as "The Great Satan" and the populace under Khamenei doesn't exactly share those sentiments wholesale, it's important that the American public recognize that.�

Just consider the Jason Jones segment the Daily Show did last night. Raise your hand if before you saw the election snafu or this segment you thought the Iranians were in the same league as Iraq and Afghanistan as far as what most Americans think of as "that crazy, neverending bullshit in the Middle Easy." I'm willing to bet a lot of people did. And I'm sure a lot of people were surprised to see the citizens of a major "Axis of Evil" participant shaking off the notion of hating America. Sure, some Iranians do want us to burn. But then again, we have people in this country who bomb abortion clinics and still call Koreans "Chinamen." Doesn't mean they represent our country as a whole. And considering the median age of Iran's population hovers somewhere around 26 (Sidenote: check out this article as to why that is), this is our chance to make a better impression of ourselves with a new Iranian generation.

And while one name's pronunciation may seem like a silly suggestion for a mental link to the same cultural sentiment as 30 years ago, if doesn't take much for prejudices to ferment.�

So please, the next time you see a Fox News anchor, or CNN talking head or any other person start talking about "Ka-may-nee"...take the time to correct the image in your head.�

Different Guy. Different pronunciation. Same regime, but different times.

Seeing as we can't add Erik Paulson as an editor on the blog, consider this a guest post...

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I'm a member of the Student Council, one of five reps from the Graduate School. Muckrackers has kindly agreed to carry a guest post to talk about the next ASM meeting. I'm going to tell you everything that I know about this meeting, which is not a lot. The scary thing? I probably know more than most council members. It's hard to imagine how we expect students to have any idea of what we're talking about when we barely know. Continuing a Muckracker's tradition, hopefully this will both shame and inform.

If you've got comments about any agenda item, you can send mail to any council member - all of our email addresses are on the ASM website. You can also speak at Open Forum - any student has a right to 3 minutes to speak about whatever they want.

(I won't actually be at this meeting because I had a conflict, but this Friday night was the night that had the fewest conflicts so I lost the scheduling vote in May.)

Associated Students of Madison

Student Council, 16^th Session

6:30 PM; 8 May, 2009

Hearing Room, Student Activity Center, 333 E. Campus Mall

1. Roll Call Summer Session is usually pretty light, but we might have 20-ish people there, which is much better than years past.
2. Swearing in of New Representatives - None, but there are some vacancies and people who want serve. There's a special student who probably "won" an election (it was a 4-way tie, each with 1 vote. Two of the people who got a vote were asked by the SEC to serve but said no, but he never got contacted about serving.) He came to Open Forum last month and basically said "WTF?" We also have openings for a freshman (serve til October), a School of Ed student, and a student from Human Ecology. No one seems to know how to officially declare a seat vacant, and the bylaws are no help. Maybe by next meeting...
3. Open Forum 3 Minutes per person, for up to 45 minutes, first come, first serve. We can optionally extend it.
4. Removal or Impeachment of Representatives, Filling of Vacancies in the Student Council and Swearing In of New Representatives. See II. Why two items of 'Swearing In of New Representatives?" Because the ASM Bylaws have a bug and we have to have it on there twice. The Bylaws need a good scrubbing.
5. Adoption of the Agenda
6. Reading and Approval of the Minutes Too bad you can't read them, or any from the 16^th session yet. We don't actually have them ahead of time, so unless we can find an error in 30 seconds they're basically just approved.
7. Special Orders
1. Committee and Board Appointments
1. Diversity Committee This probably shouldn't be Special Orders, but whatever. My understanding is that this is for Grad Representative Elizabeth Wrigley-Field to be appointed to the Diversity Committee. I haven't heard of anyone else who wants to be appointed to the Diversity Committee. We are limited to five council seats on the Diversity Committee, and we might already have that. If the meeting minutes were online, I could check to see who else is on the committee, but they're not. (She can still serve on it because it's an "open committee", which means any UW student can be a part of the committee. However, each council member is required to serve on a committee, and the 5-person limit has traditionally been understood to mean that if there are more than five on a committee, not everyone gets to count their service towards their requirement and has to serve on something else)
2. Adoption of Fall Semester Campaigns This will be the big agenda item for the evening. If Open Forum is short, we should get to this by about 6:20. The meeting has to end at 9pm, and this could easily take up the entire meeting. More likely, we discuss it until 8:30, postpone it until July, and finish the rest of the agenda. See below for more discussion.
8. Old Business
9. New Business
1. Approval of Nominations Board Recommendations Noms board is forwarding Tim Hogan and Kathyrn Fifield as nominees for justices with the Student Judiciary and Charlie Marcus for the SSFC Accountability Liaison. (The SSFC Accountability Liaison job is to basically go to all of the student services groups we fund like GUTS, Wisconsin Student Lobby, WISPIRG, and make sure that they're actually providing the services they say they are. This person does not have a vote on the SSFC, but works for the SSFC) We should also have the Shared Governance PA nominated by Friday. (We've done all the interviews, just checking some references.)
2. Appeal to the Regents. Your guess is as good as mine.
3. Student Savings Club I have no idea what this is about. I wonder if it's important or why anyone should care about it. A late email from Chair Tyler Junger tells me that it's someone who wants to start a "savings club", and it will take some money to do so and he'll have more information on Thursday afternoon.
10. Reports of Special Committees
1. Safety Campaign We don't have anyone appointed to this, so nothing
2. UHS/SAC Standing Board I think this is a bylaws bug, and has been replaced by the SAC Governing Board
3. Bus Pass Advisory Committee No idea if who's on this or if they even know they should reporting Friday night.
11. Reports of Standing Committees and Boards Nearly all the chairs write their report, but those written versions never get posted. It'd be nice if they were posted ahead of time, so non-council members would have an idea of what's going on, and so we didn't all have to sit there listening to someone read them to us. The committee chairs all meet in a "Coordinating Council", so they all know what to expect coming into this meeting, but the rest of us, and any student who might be interested in attending has no idea unless they show up and listen.
1. Academic Affairs Committee They had a drop off for the book swap, Don't know what else they've been up to.
2. Diversity Committee No idea what, if anything, they've done this month.
3. Finance Committee The finance committee will meet for the first time an hour before the council meeting, so all they'll manage to do is elect their officers. They don't really need to get started until July anyway when the fiscal year starts and there's grant money available.
4. Foundation Hiring Committee This is a bylaws bug and should be removed.
5. Legislative Affairs Committee I know they met, I think on Study Day, but no idea what they're doing. Too bad, because this is the state budget for the next two years is being written this week 6 blocks from the ASM offices, but Leg Affairs was so badly broken for two years they're just not geared up for any serious lobbying effort.
6. Nominations Board See earlier.
7. Shared Governance Committee Probably not much. Nearly all Shared Gov committee are done until August.
8. StudentPrint Board No idea. Do they even know they should be reporting tonight?
9. SAC Governing Board. They're meeting for the first (maybe second?) time on Friday as well. The Wisconsin Signers want after-hours access, they're going to talk about Move-Out night, and continue discussing what the Caf� on the 3^rd floor should be like.
10. External Affairs. This should be on the agenda, but it's not, again because of a bylaws bug. Probably haven't done much, there are only three members of the committee (Vice Chair Tom Templeton, L&S Rep Jonah Zinn, and Grad Rep Matt Tobelmann)
12. General Reports
1. Chair Tyler sent out an email to council 2.5 weeks ago detailing his meeting with the Chancellor, so he may recap that (basically - SAFE program administration costs are going to be part of seg fees. The SSFC had voted not to fund them, the Chancellor overruled SSFC. The Chancellor also overruled the SSFC and restored security funding to the Union.) There's also a working group being formed to plan for the Madison Initiative oversight committee (yes, a committee to create a new committee). Finally, ASM might have sent people to the Provost candidates public presentations. He probably has more to talk about, but you'll have to show up to find out. Again, it'd be nice if the reports were available ahead of time so students could know if they should show up.
2. Vice-Chair United Council had a 2-day meeting in Madison last week, and that's sort of been Vice Chair Tom Templeton's thing, so he'll probably talk about that. We've also been screwed out of our booth space at SOAR because of the move to Engineering. We were hoping to find new space, but I don't know if we found any or if ASM still has a presence at SOAR. Show up to find out if he's got more :)
3. Student Judiciary I doubt they have anything
4. Student Services Finance Committee. They've elected leadership - Brandon Williams is chair, Michael Romenesko is Vice Chair, and Matthew Manes is Secretary. No idea what else to expect.
13. Reports of Liaisons We don't have any, so this is a bylaws bug.
14. Viewpoint Neutrality Appeals Still too early for these! When we start student group funding in the fall, we may start getting them.
15. Announcements
16. Roll Call

Campaign Ideas

This is an unordered list of campaign ideas. The end goal is to pick a handful of campaign ideas for the fall- maybe two, three at most. At the last meeting, we tried but ran out of time to refer these ideas to various committees to discuss the feasibility of ideas and to try and create a more concrete proposal, so we're sort of back at square one. I have no idea how this discussion is going to work, which is why I think it's going to take 2 hours and still not get done.

Campaign	Committee Referral
Paperless Meetings	Coordinating Council
Domestic Partner Benefit	Legislative Affair
Multi-Cult Floor	Diversity
SAFE Reforms	Academic Affairs/ Legislative Affairs
Food at Meetings	Coordinating Council
Relevancy of ASM	External
Increased Lighting on Campus	Academic Affairs/ Legislative Affairs
Technology Outreach & Development Initiative	External
Textbook Rental Program	Academic Affairs
Aggressive Outreach Efforts	External
Work Study Wage Increase	Academic Affairs
Additional 24 Hour Library	Academic Affairs
Textbook Costs	Academic Affairs
Capitol Building Projects	SSFC
Wiscard (Add #'s for SAFE & RCC)	Academic Affairs/ Legislative Affairs
Chapter 17/18	Legislative Affair
Online Records Accessibility	External/Coordinating Council
Tuition & Financial Aid	Academic Affairs
Need-based Financial Aid	Academic Affairs
College Student Council Fund	SSFC/Finance
ASM/Regents Relationship	External
Rape Whistles at UW Bookstore	Academic Affairs
Increased relations w/press	External
leadership training, Shared Gov Involvement	Shared Governance

There's another campaign idea that's more developed from Katrina Flores:

Innovative Multicultural Initiatives Campaign

Goals:

1. Support and actively work on expanding MLC floors across campus.

2. Advocate and actively work on a financial model for no additional costs for living on an MLC floor.

3. Support and actively work toward expansion of the student run and initiated course: InterCultural Dialogues (ICD)

4. Actively work towards financial stability and institutionalization of ICD course in regard to course costs and an annually funded .5 Graduate PA

5. Support and create a Multicultural RSO network as an active innovative multicultural initiative generator

Sought Partners:

MCSC

House Fellows

MRC's

Housing

WUD Committees

Diversity Committee

RSO's actively supporting and initiating multicultural education programming

UPDATE 1:46, P.M.:�After contacting the candidates, it seems that no one was interviewed for this position. Both Rahul Kamath and Qi Zhang were not interviewed, but only submitted their letters and received rejection e-mails a couple of days later.

---

After we found out a few weeks ago that Mark Woulf had been appointed to the non-voting student position on Alcohol License Review Committee (arguably one of the most powerful committees tied to City Council), there were rumblings that this went over the head of everyone -- mainly because nobody told the rest of ASM that the appointment had been made. Nor had Bryon Eagon or Eli Judge, who pushed this through City Council.

Of course, you have to understand that they don't need to consult them. It's probably a good idea to do so, of course, but it's not essential.�

However, it seemed like there was enough that was odd about the appointment that it needed a little digging. So a week and an open records request later, we have some more information on the process.

Who are the applicants? Let's have a look:

- Kelvin R. Santiago-Chaparro.��Seems to be very invested in how alcohol pertains to drunk driving deaths (he notes that over 30 percent of alcohol related deaths in Madison were under the age of 25.), but notes that it is "Unfortunate that sometimes the approach taken by those in charge of alcohol policies turns out to be a punitive one[...]" Also mentions that he a research assistant for the Traffic and Operations Safety Laboratory.�

He seems to be part of a specific area of alcohol research (and one which doesn't exactly pertain to the largely carless student body, but at least he's aware of some alcohol related problems.�

- Andrew Bond. Included his resume, but seems to have no real experience pertaining to the position.�

- Joseph Goldfine.�A 25-year old student who works at Amy's Cafe. He makes a point of this, arguing that a bar-centric perspective might be helpful on ALRC. That neglects the fact, of course, that the Tavern League already has a representative on the board.�

-Hannah Lokus

A 20-year old junior, she stands out for having actually discussed something regarding alcohol with one of the other members of ALRC, Dr. Pamela Bean. (who can be seen here arguing that an increased beer tax could fund treatment for alcohol abuse) She seems to at least talk of a balance between responsible alcohol use and defending the downtown nightlife.

- Qi Zhang. A medical student dealing with public health issues, she makes it clear that she is also interested in DUIs. Asks for more clarification as to what the job entails. Adam Sheka follows up and tells her it would be meeting with City Council members, preparing for meetings, etc. She seems to be far off the mark from what ASM would be looking for, as she seems to give credence to the prohibitionist hissing that comes from some of people in this city.

-Ben Heidemann. Not much to say here. Junior going into law who feels the position would "provide insight into the dealings of the alcohol licensing process and will work to strengthen my future career."�

Sorry, this is not an internship.

-Rahul�Kamath�(broken into two pieces, click on last name for second page). This is interesting. 30 year old PhD student (which, I'm sure works against him here) who is studying behavioral economics. He sure knows how to make his case: In addition to working for the US Dept. of Transportation, he makes it clear what his area of study is: "...incentivization methods, enforcement of contractual obligations, [and] business/governmental relations..." Given the fact that he's been studying this awhile, it might have given him an edge. And as for the whole "complex analysis" thing...hell, just look at his website. He had me hooked just from the In Rainbows topic alone. (and Hipsters, my god, hipsters?)

-Lastly, but certainly not least, we have Mark Woulf. (same break as last time.) He applied using the same credentials he used in his City Council run (normal student, member of the alcohol and other drugs task force), except this time, his run for City Council was used as credentials. He misspelled the name of the special assistant to the chancellor on community affairs and makes the repeated claim that the university is wrong to try and curb underage drinking.

What's more, his record during the campaign should speak for itself -- here's a guy who wanted to end bar raids, despite the fact that he has no real power (even if he was an alder) over what police do. Then, when he talks about getting his chance to affect the situation when the police and bars meet under the banner of ALRC...he gets appointed and doesn't attend meetings regarding the specific bar incidents he mentions!�

Now, I know that Woulf said he had family affairs to tend to, but I'm pretty sure ASM asked for availability in it's e-mail request for applications. He was the only applicant who did not provide this. And he was picked.

So what do we make of all of this?

1. The position is designated for the Chair of ASM or his/her designee. It's left up to the chair to decide how that appointment process happens, but in this case, the outgoing chair, Brittany Wiegand made an executive decision as to what to do, although the e-mails indicate Adam Sheka, the former Shared Gov. Committee chair, consulted.

2. It looks like this was all done within the span of five days. The first application came in on Sunday, April 26. The last one came in on April 30 at 4 p.m. (that one was from Woulf). The rejection e-mails were sent out the same day at 9:55 p.m. So let's make it clear -- once all applications were submitted, they took five hours to decide.�

3. What's more, it seems they did not conduct interviews with the applicants.�The e-mails sent to applicants who didn't make the cut say the following:�

"Thank you for applying for the position. We had several extraordinarily qualified candidates for the seat. After reviewing�all of the letters,�another student has been appointed to the seat."

In addition, two of the applicants, Joseph Goldfine and Kelvin Santiago-Chaparro, confirmed they were not interviewed for the position. There is the possibility that interviews were conducted with a few people, but all signs point to the likelyhood of that being slim to none. Especially since Wiegand's e-mail to Junger informing him of the pick of Mark Woulf made it clear that they looked at all the applications and Wiegand picked Woulf.�

Now, it's within her right to make that pick, but should it really be that way? Especially when it only took a couple of hours to make up her mind and no one was interviewed for the position?�

Junger commented on this in a story last week, stating that Woulf was the most qualified as none of the other candidates had any real student government experience.

Seems to me that there was at least enough diversity of experience in the candidate to merit a closer look. Hell, maybe since our appointee hasn't actually attended a meeting yet and it was made by the last chair, we should have a second go at this appointment process.