Associated Students of Madison members urged the newly elected Student Council to improve outreach and legislative affairs at the State of ASM address Monday.
Brittany Wiegand, ASM chair, said this year's Student Council had many leaders who pushed outreach efforts, and urged next year's council to take those efforts further by informing students about ASM and improving recruitment drives.
\[Outreach] is just something we'd never considered before this year,"" she said. ""We'd never talk about ways that we outreach to our constituents when we'd make decisions.""
Representatives also encouraged the next council to focus more on lobbying efforts at the Capitol to protect the university's interests.
""Our legislative affairs were a little lacking this year,"" Adam Sheka, Shared Governance chair, said. ""That needs to improve through campus-wide collaboration.""
According to Wiegand, one reason ASM lobbying efforts were unsuccessful is because ASM lacked a legislative affairs committee chair for half the year.
ASM members also reviewed the year's successes. Wiegand said one major success was the constitution initiative, which drew in a 15 percent voter turnout but failed to pass.
Although ASM members were pleased with the turnout, Representative Johnny Tackett said ASM should continue to increase student awareness.
""I don't like to hang my hat on that,"" he said. ""We still have a long way to go.""
Wiegand also listed the creation of a press office, an image redesign and new internal legislation as successes.
Several ASM Grassroots Committee chairs spoke about their individual committees' accomplishments.
Sheka said he reshaped the Shared Governance committee to work better with the administration by training students in non-adversarial and professional discussion.
""It's not telling the administration, 'You're wrong.' It's saying, 'This is what we think is better,'"" he said. ""When we're not so combative, they're more willing to listen to us.""
Chris Tiernan, Academic Affairs chair, said his committee streamlined the Textbook Swap, pushed for domestic partner benefits for UW employees, analyzed the efficiency of campus libraries and began efforts to alleviate waitlists in the Spanish department.
Steven Olikara, Diversity Committee chair, said his committee focused on redefining diversity on campus to include all students.
The current ASM session representatives officially end their session on Thursday, and the newly elected officials will begin the next session on Friday.
