There going to spend $50,000 to rate apartments? I just did a 5 second search on google and found at least 10 sites that already do this and yes it includes Madison.

Fiscal responsibility? Their going to spend $50,000 on a website that will fail and yet they don’t want to challenge the chancellor or UW system that is taking $180,000 of seg fees to fund financial aid, which is clearly against segregated fee polices and they’re claiming fiscal responsibility? BS.

They’re trying to bribe the chancellor with the $180,000 so that they can feel big and important when she calls down from her mountain top to have the ASM leadership clowns dance for her.

Correction: they did not pass the Finance Committee’s budget, they passed Kurt Gosselin’s version of what he thought the budget should be. It was appaling how much the rest of the ASM council didn’t question his reasoning and just went along with it.

I cannot believe that they are using that much money to duplicate a service. The Student Tenant Union was funded in order to provide such services as the $50,000 that will soon be included within the ASM budget. For an organization that preaches about NOT duplicating services, they do an incredibly hypocritical job of doing just that.

And over $8,000 for a brand-new position? Something smells funny here. That is a RIDICULOUS sum of money for a glorified secretary position.

As a member of the Student Council and one who helped craft parts of Secretary Gosselin’s proposal, I, too, am surprised by the lack of discussion over the amendment. Although I felt that the amendment was a fair balance between our wants and needs, it did contain some controversial material that was debated less than I expected.

And the $50,000 was included to “keep it alive” until the budget gets the the SSFC who will likely remove it. The idea was to increase the amount of time that we have to think about what the project would entail.

Also, a reminder that this budget is NOT the final budget for the next fiscal year. The budget will first go to the SSFC for amendments and then back to Council. After Council approves SSFC’s version, the budget is final. If Council disagrees with SSFC, they enter a compromise scenario where 4 representatives from each group meet to reach a compromise on the unagreed upon substance.

A “Chief of Staff” position? Sounds like ASM is sneakily moving one step closer to having a presidential system. Kurt Gosselin may be able to manipulate the naive student council into doing exactly what he wants.

ASM funded a FAILED tenant resource website last year. So glad that they increased that funding to fail further. Where is the Badger Herald blowing a BS whistle on this?

Oh wait, they are probably playing trivia with the ASM leadership and forgetting to do their actual jobs.

Kurt Gosselin has become the ultimate puppet master. And ASM leadership is letting him do it. GROW A PAIR and stand up to him. He doesn’t actually connect with students on any level.

While I’m not Kurt Gosselin’s biggest fan, I’m surprised that people are so quick to blame him for things, and ignore the 32 other student council members that failed to vote down whatever it was he proposed. They should be held just as accountable.

Rabble Rabble Rabble Rabble!

First of all, I’d like to say that Badger Herald wrote an excellent article and did not turn this story into an opinion piece. They do tend to quote the same people over and over again, specifically Kurt Gosselin, and that should be addressed. That being said, Gosselin was obviously an important voice at this meeting, so it makes sense that he is quoted in this article. In today’s paper there was another story about the LAC and Kurt is also quoted in that as well. Badger Herald, you should try to quote different people to get a fresh perspective on things.

The $50,000 housing and tenant service will be cut by SSFC anyways, so don’t worry about that.

And to address the $180,000 that the Chancellor takes for financial aid, many members of ASM are strongly against it, but the Student Government really doesn’t have any sway over the University. They can’t just tell the University, stop taking this money. It doesn’t work like that. I think they do want to challenge it, but they don’t have the power to do so.

However, I will concede that certain members of ASM have a creepily close relationship with the Chancellor, specifically Tom Templeton.

As to issues regarding Gosselin and Student Council, Yes, he has enormous sway over Student Council. I know it and I’ve seen it. If he wants something, he can usually get it. I believe he is currently the person with the most ASM experience and has a lot of knowledge and information that other Student Council Representatives do not. I don’t think it’s a matter of Student Council Representatives not standing up to me him because they don’t have a pair, I think they just don’t have an equal amount of experience and are easily swayed by Gosselin.

If you have ever met Kurt Gosselin, you know he can be very persuasive. Even if you disagree with him, which I usually do, he still makes an excellent argument. I think his career choice of law is a good one.

That being said, the vote was 13-1-6, so simply blaming Gosselin is wrong.

If you feel that strongly about an issue, you should contact a Student Council Representative or try and get involved in ASM to change things, instead of hiding behind a website to bitch people out.

Okay, I promise I’m almost done.

The last thing I really want to say is that Kurt cares a lot about ASM and has good intentions. He is a paying student here too, and he cares where student money goes. He definitely doesn’t come from money. So, I’m probably a hypocrite because I just gave a whole speech on bitching people out, but to the person who said Kurt doesn’t care because he’s graduating…get your facts straight. He has a lot of sway in ASM. True, but he has accomplished a lot of great things. I think he has forever changed how SSFC decides if groups deserve funding and wants to make sure student money goes to appropriate organizations.

So don’t diss Kurt, he’s a nice guy.

Anonymous personal attacks on me aside, I am curious what particular issues people have with the budget amendment I proposed. The ultimate idea behind the proposal I forwarded (in consultation with nearly a dozen members of the Council and SSFC prior to submission) was to provide for a reasonable increase in the amount of funding while allocating the funding to the areas of the organization in which the largest effective and positive benefits can occur.

I understand the desire of those who disagree with me to anonymously slander my name, but I neither have the interest nor obligation to respond to it.

I feel it is better use of my time to lend some substance to this discussion concerning the appropriation of student funding. I will detail a number of these major proposals below.

1) Staff The Associated Students of Madison, a unit of the Office of the Dean of Students, has 11 university staff. Four of these staff specifically work with the financial management and resources for student organization and service funding. The other seven work to manage the bus pass, advise the SSFC, run student print, run the Student Activity Center and then three more for organizing and administrative duties.

I understand the potential for disagreement over the staff position, but it should be noted this reduction has been discussed for years. The ultimate question here is whether or not it is worth the $57,000 or whether we should spend that money on something else.

2) Chief of Staff The ASM Chair and Vice Chair are annually overwhelmed with so many more requests, meetings, etc. than they can possibly attend or even address in addition to the massive amount of internal issues and requests that also need attention. The Chief-of-Staff position is designed in the Leo McGarry model. This individual would be an extension arm of the Chair/Vice Chair and be able to represent them in meetings, etc. when the Chair/Vice-Chair cannot attend. Also, since the ASM Chair/Vice-Chair are unable to get work done in their office when they are constantly bombarded with (oftentimes) menial issues. The Chief of Staff can help alleviate these issues.

3) General Travel I proposed a change to lump all budget travel into a lin-item for $10,000. Whatever anyone’s view of United Council (pro, anti, luke-warm, enthusiastic, etc.) this general funding model would allow the leadership of the organization to determine which events, activities are important for use of funding. The primary functions would be for United Council, Student Representatives, Board of Regents Meetings and perhaps federal/state lobbying efforts. By making it one general line-item, it eliminates a little extra and unnecessary bureaucracy.

4) Creative Works Fund This was initially proposed by Erik Paulson. The idea behind this fund is to subsidize artistic/creative endeavors that will remain behind as a benefit to the student body. I proposed increasing this funding from $1000 recommended to $5000 to make it a more legitimate pilot program. I look at this as an ASM Fund for the Arts and think it will help provide support for an underacknowledged niche on campus.

5) $260,000 for Event Grants I proposed increasing Event Grants to provide additional resources for groups to hold events on campus. Part of the impetus for this increase was to anticipate increased requests from former GSSF groups who no longer receive GSSF funding.

6) Students with Disabilities Funding I proposed a reduction of $5000 to set the amount available for interpreters and captionists at $20,000. Based on financial information from last fiscal year, approximately $11,000 was expended, leaving $19,000 remaining from the initially-allocated $30,000 (a motion I made and voted for 2 years ago). This year’s total is set at $25,000 and none of the funding has been expended. Thus, my decision to reduce the funding to $20,000 was to cover the amount of requests (anticipating an increase in requests) without unnecessarily charging students extra seg fees.

7) Graduate Technology Assistant I think we all would concur that the ASM website is not conducive for students to access necessary information. This position is designed to hire a grad student to commit a substantial portion of time to overhauling and maintaining the website.

8) I did not support the increase for Tenant Housing Support Services. I felt that an 8% increase (the amount proposed by my amendment) was reasonable, but the $50,000 for this service massively inflates the increase above this amount. Again, my primary concern was placing resources in line-items where they will make the largest impact and balance that desire with only a modest overall increase in the budget. Fiscally-responsible budgeting.

There were a number of other changes in the proposal, most of which were non-controversial and thus not debated. If these other changes were controversial, I do not know why council members did not debate these items. Throughout the meeting, I pushed to continue debate on the budget, so ample opportunity was available to continue discussion on these issues.

I hope that this thread and these explanations of my rationale will help stimulate substantive debate about the ASM Internal Budget.

Sincerely, Kurt Gosselin

First “The ultimate idea behind the proposal I forwarded (in consultation with nearly a dozen members of the Council and SSFC prior to submission)” But not the Finance Committee Chair? That seems odd. Secondly it wasn’t an amendment it was a replacement. argue semantics all you want Kurt it is what it is, you didn’t like the budget that the Finance Committee worked on and you submitted an alternative.

As far as the staff position being cut Kurt knew that the position was not filled two years ago because of a self imposed hiring freeze. A different Student Council saw that this was a mistake and reinstate the position. Kurt was asked specifically asked for last year�s spending on the position and he replied that it was available. This means that he either has a memory problem or he flat out lied. That information was distributed and is available. Chief of staff position, how many chairs and vice chairs have been able to do their jobs in the past without a hired lackey? All of them. General travel line item � how is this funding going to be distributed? Who�s going to decide if their ass has been kissed enough that the travel money will be given to them? We�ve already seen leadership bullying people for votes. would it surprise anyone to see someone not vote the way leadership wants them to be punished by having travel money denied. I think not.

Ohhhhh Kurt. Trying to cover your tracks when you have been called out. The Badger Herald article is a sugar-coated version of ASM, like all of their coverage thus far. Where is their criticism of anything that they have done?

Kurt has bullied people into decisions before, I am not surprised that Student Council didn’t feel comfortable standing up to his argument and the “facts” he seems to consistently be able to pull out of his ass. It would have been crucial to think about how the intern program (of which Kurt and Tom Templeton are BOTH products) can no longer function. Use the services and then throw away the people who helped you get there. AWESOME.

Oh and Kurt, stop giving away the copy code to WSL. I mean, it’s no surprise they sailed through SSFC with your puppeteering but people recognize how manipulative you are.

Don’t worry all kinds of facts are going to be coming out. all kinds.

ASM has approved $1.2 million of student money for their internal budget (Badger Herald, Nov 11) and yet withdraws $8,000 support for the World Music Festival support due to not having the ASM logo on posters (Badger Herald, Nov 11).

Could ASM approve a few thousand dollars to get the ASM logo imprinted on their foreheads so we can clearly know who these current ASM members are when they walk around campus, make decisions, and they and their parties come up for reelection next time?