At Tuesday’s ASM student council meeting, the council discussed accusations of Recreation and Wellbeing and the Dean of Students office lobbying student government leaders. They also introduced legislation stating the council does not approve of the Wisconsin Union and RecWell FY22 budgets, which the Student Services Finance Committee previously debated.
Chair Matthew Mitnick and Rep. Sam Jorudd presented their case on why they believe Dean of Students Christina Olstad and Director of Recreation & Wellbeing Aaron Hobson have been lobbying student leaders for the use of ASM reserve funds. Memorandum states Hobson and Olstad attempted to persuade members of the ASM Reserve Board on how they should allocate the $1.5 million the board is currently in control of.
In tonight’s meeting, the Student Services Finance Committee debated RecWell’s proposed 2022 budget, centering around RecWell’s request for an additional $1.20 in segregated student fees.
They also voted to approve the Wisconsin Union’s 2022 budget.
According to RecWell Director Aaron Hobson, the COVID-19 pandemic has been financially difficult for RecWell. In fiscal year 2021, RecWell had projected that they’d make $2.1 million dollars in Alternative Funding money from sources such as summer youth camps and community gym memberships Hobson said. Instead, they ended up spending $164,200 to refund such sources.
Hobson said although RecWell would use the proposed increase to keep their budget neutral, 40% of any segregated fee funding would go to RecWell student-worker salaries.
A recently deleted Reddit post about a University of Wisconsin student calling their teaching assistant brought attention to UW publishing TA’s personal phone numbers in their faculty directory.
The university is not transparent about the disclosure of this information, according to UW Teaching Assistants’ Association Leader of Membership Coordination Rachel McClure. Unless they opt out, the data of university employees is shared with members of the public upon their request, McClure said.
“The university never informs graduate workers that this is the case, and so no one knows to opt-out, unless they are advised by peers to alter the correct settings deep within the Student Center,” McClure said in a written statement to The Badger Herald.