Blind Side, a politically minded student group, is running a slate of 23 students in the upcoming Associated Students of Madison elections, which include 29 open Student Council seats and three open Student Services Finance Committee seats.
The group, created in late January, says it hopes its slate of students will bring social and economic justice for underrepresented students on the UW-Madison campus through ASM legislation and resource allocation.
Tyriek Mack, Kristi Parsons and Jerad Maxberry are running on the Blind Side slate for the three open SSFC seats—the branch of ASM that controls student fees, which are the main source of funding for student organizations.
UW-Madison senior Donale Richards, who is helping run communications and promotion for Blind Side, said the group wants to collectively “control and have more student power in the investment and divestment of certain funding opportunities.”
UW-Madison senior and Blind Side candidate Kenneth Cole said the students running on the Blind Side slate have specific goals for university funding. He said Blind Side is looking to push the university to invest more money in clean energy, mental health services and diversity efforts while also eventually divesting from Badger State Industries.
The leaders of the Blind Side movement reached out to several other students with similar motivations in February to fill their slate.
Blind Side organizers said they hope to achieve institutional power in order to provide a level of accountability for change students want.
“A lot of students were really frustrated with how things kept going. We kept having these diversity discussions that were supposed to solve all of our issues, we were seeing that those weren’t really being effective at all,” Richards said. “We really needed to take a lot more leadership roles on campus to achieve the change we wanted to see.”
Blind Side is currently working with several student organizations to finalize endorsements of its candidates. Richards said Blind Side is attempting to bring students together, and hopes to have endorsements finalized before the elections begin.
Cole encouraged all students to vote after there was an extremely low rate of participation in the 2014-’15 academic year. He said this election is very important because student “voting decides the future of this campus.”
Students can vote online for the ASM elections, which will run March 7-9.
