The ASUW Senate is working towards restructuring itself in preparation for changes on campus and defining its general elections to allow for this restructuring to occur sooner.
At the Nov. 9 ASUW senate meeting, members of the ad-hoc restructuring committee presented their current plan to other members of the senate for feedback.
The goal of the restructuring is to prepare ASUW for changes on campus and to improve its ability to represent a diverse population at UW.
“We can’t elect people in spring for a college that won’t exist,” President Swilling said. He added that even though the academic restructuring is no longer planned for next semester, it is still necessary for ASUW to be prepared for these changes sooner rather than later.
In order to be as proactive as possible, the restructuring committee for ASUW has been hard at work drafting up proposals for how to accommodate this restructuring.
This first proposal included reducing the size of ASUW from 32 seats to 21. While this is a large change on paper, the committee does not expect it to be as impactful as it may appear.
Senator Hannah Rhymes said that although ASUW is currently structured around having 32 fully engaged senators, they typically see full engagement from 20-24, and have vacancies in the senate as is.
Additionally, ASUW is considering moving from a senate built around college representation to a “student-at-large” model. This means that seats will not be allocated to a specific college based on its size, and will instead be assigned in a general election that is irrespective of a senator’s field of study.
“[Senators] run for their college, but they’re really running for general issues,” Rhymes said, referring to the frequency with which new members enter with goals that are irrespective of their college, such as focusing on diversity and inclusion on campus or the first-year-student experience.
“In our view right now, the current senate we have is not the best method for college representation,” Chief of Legislative Affairs Kathryne Carrier said.
The primary concern is that even though the senate is designed around the equitable representation of colleges, college-specific issues may be under-addressed.
While the move from college-based seat allocation may be worrisome for smaller colleges and schools, the senate believes it has a solution that will better serve them when compared to the current model.
A “College Council” was proposed, which would operate outside of the senate to address college-specific issues. This council would be filled via an application process and would allow one representative per college, and would deal exclusively in these concerns.
“It was still very important to us that we still had college representation,” Carrier said. “There are still college-specific issues that happen, and we wanted to make sure that those were being heard and still being addressed.”
In order to better evaluate engagement by senators, the committee is also reviewing the requirements of senators.
“You tick off a box and say ‘yeah, I went to an event’,” Rhymes said, referring to the current structure of senator requirements. “Frankly, it’s not the kind of culture we want to continue sponsoring.”
While the committee did stress that they don’t believe senators are currently doing this, they said it doesn’t encourage the kind of engagement they hope to see from senators.
As the restructuring committee moves forwards, they hope to address further potential improvements to the senate, including reviews of some ASUW programs and writing further legislation to promote more flexibility and improvements to working documents for ASUW.
