A bill adding a new student regent has the potential to greatly benefit UW-Madison students. The one passed yesterday by the state senate does just the opposite.

We believe the best way to strengthen the position of UW-Madison students would be recognizing Madison’s position as a world-class university with unique needs and priorities and add a student regent devoted solely to this campus.

Unfortunately Senate Bill 175 will weaken the position of System students in general and UW-Madison students in particularly.

All System students are hurt by the stipulation one student be an undergraduate nominated by student government. Given the terminally non-representative and ineffective statewide student governing body, United Council, the nominated student is likely to be completely out of touch with mainstream students at all System schools. It would be even worse for UW-Madison students ? United Council is so tilted towards the smaller schools in the System it campaigned against the Madison Initiative.

The second student regent would be selected to represent “non-traditional” students. Non-traditional is defined as an undergraduate student, at least 24-years-old, and either employed or have children. Although this group of students is important, and the notion congenial, it should be obvious to all that the vast majority of college students would not be represented by a non-traditional regent. If the state is truly concerned about students being underrepresented, then the answer is not to feature the advice of an extremely small number of students.

This bill makes a bad situation worse for UW-Madison students. It would make the regular student regent captive to a radical special interest group posing as student government and the other a member of a tiny student cohort. The result would be zero regents for the average student. This bill must go no further.