In a marathon-long meeting Thursday night, Union Council butted heads with the Associated Students of Madison over who controls the process for naming the new Union South.

Union Council President Xiangyun Zhang said the process of naming the new union would start with a student subcommittee choosing five to seven names from a list generated by open brainstorm sessions.

From there, Union Council would choose three options and forward them to Chancellor Biddy Martin for approval.

However, ASM Chair Tyler Junger was in contact with Martin and produced an e-mail in which Martin confirmed naming would instead be done through ASM in conjunction with the Union.

“Her opinion is that if students are going to be paying $100 million toward this building, they should be given the opportunity to name it,” he said.

As the representative of the student body, Junger said he believed ASM should head the process.

In the e-mail, Junger asked Martin for clarification about the naming process. He said, “As I recall, you wanted the naming to be directed through ASM with the help of the Union — is this correct?”

Martin responded with two sentences: “Absolutely correct. Let me know how it goes.”

A heated discussion followed the announcement from Junger, in which a number of Union Council members said they would like further explanation from Martin as to her vision for the process.

“I think we need more than just an e-mail that’s two sentences,” said Jeff Rolling, ASM Shared Governance representative and former Wisconsin Union president. “I want to know what the chancellor’s really thinking about this.”

The decision to approve the naming process was postponed until January during which time Zhang, Junger and Union Director Mark Guthier will meet with Martin to hear her thoughts.

After a presentation by Julie Grove from Capital Planning and Development, the council also voted to approve furniture selections, concluding an integral part of the furniture, fixtures and equipment phase of the South Campus Union project.

This decision was supposed to be made in September, according Vice President for Project Management Patrick Tilley, but had to be postponed due to lack of student involvement during the summer.

Looking ahead to the Memorial Union renovation, Union Council also amended the original structure of the Design Committee as laid out by Tilley because members of Union Council thought it was too complex.

Tilley laid out a plan with interest group involvement within the Design Committee itself, an executive board that would work with architects, as well as the Core Committee, and an outreach team that would work with the chair and vice chair of the Design Committee.

For Junger, the complexity of the structure arises in who is accountable for the decisions made.

“There isn’t a clear line of who’s making a decision where,” he said. “There’s one other big problem: it’s not defined who’s voting on what body.”