ASUW President Hunter Swilling is wrapping up several projects and conversations as his term nears its end, including discussing the future of the university with UW President Ed Seidel.
At the Tuesday, April 12 ASUW meeting, Swilling discussed the process of adjusting the ASUW elections codes, the possibility of moving to a “block tuition” structure, and the overall success of the ASUW Senate elections.
The changes to the elections codes are “Based on complaints and thoughts upon meeting with the judicial council to go over all of the elections [codes] complaints that they received and then making necessary changes to the elections codes to reflect some of the problems that they saw,” Swilling said.
President Swilling also met with UW President Ed Seidel to discuss future projects and proposals.
In the Union, the reopening of the Gardens and the introduction of a Chik-Fil-A are tentatively moving forward. A new gaming lounge is also being built in the basement of the Union.
Another proposal discussed in the meeting was partnering with corporations to create hands-on classes.
“Students would sign up for class and for the entire semester work on some innovative problem that a company is facing and I thought that was a really cool and unique proposal and I was interested to see if they would have a trial program.”
Seidel and Swilling also discussed the idea of moving to a block tuition plan, in which undergraduate students would pay a block amount of money per semester rather than paying per credit hour.
“This means that it would be cheaper if you were taking 18 credit hours than it would be now. If you were just doing 12 it would be more expensive,” Swilling said.
Swilling said that the proposal is in the preliminary stages and will be examined more thoroughly in the fall.
“There obviously are some significant ramifications to this decision. It would be more difficult for nontraditional students to afford college but would, also the data shows, improve graduation rates and help students to take more credits and be actually cheaper to do so.”
He also emphasized the importance of voting in this year’s ASUW elections and said that participation this year has been much higher compared to last year.
As of Tuesday, “We already have 786 votes, which is more than we had the entirety of last year.”
Additional projects discussed at the meeting included crafting a recommendation for an honors major, giving final input on parking changes and discussing the removal of ACT and SAT scores as a requirement for undergraduate admissions.
