Committee on Undergraduate Recruitment, Admissions, and Financial Aid

(I couldn't make it this meeting, but the info below is from the minutes.)

Committee on Undergraduate Recruitment, Admissions, and Financial Aid
April 2, 2008

1. Reps from ASM’s Book Swap program came to talk about the program. CURAFA is going to write a letter of support.

2. Rob Seltzer (D/O Admissions), briefed the committee:
• The admissions process has worked very well. There were 605 more total applicants this year, but 109 fewer from in-state.
• There were a total of 3,088 paid deposits and the trend seems to point to a 2008 class size of expected numbers (a target of <5,700). style="font-weight: bold;">For the first time UW-Madison admit rate may be just below 50%.

3. Susan Fischer briefed the committee:
• 2008-09 Awards are being made
• CSA (Common Scholarship Application) is being worked on with plenty of effort from various offices. The goal was to make it student friendly.
• The home mortgage/financial crisis, which has affected several campuses, has not affected the UW. The UW Credit Union is solid financially.

4. Changes were suggested to letter to Chancellor Wiley. Gunasekaran will send an updated version to Wiley on behalf of the Committee.

5. Gunasekaran will also draft an annual report for the Faculty Senate. He will distribute it for comments.

Labor Licensing Policy Committee Special Meeting

Well, on Friday we had our special meeting with Gregg Nebel (adidas) and Scott Nova (Workers' Rights Consortium). Wiley came to the beginning 15 minutes of the meeting, and although he acknowledged that the entire garment industry is intentionally designed to exploit workers, he also undermined the committee by pretty much stating that we would not cut the contract because we would not field a naked football team. Gregg Nebel pretty much said he was going to do absolutely nothing to ensure that the workers get their jobs back. There is a job fair coming up that will hopefully get some of the workers new jobs, after a 6 week training session, but adidas is not going to urge factories to hire the blacklisted workers. I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but it seems like the blacklist is still in place. There is an ombudsman hired by the Fail Labor Association helping these former workers out, and one day 21 of them applied at a nearby factory, Chi Fung, and 16 were not even allowed to apply, of the 5 that were allowed to apply, only one was hired (supposedly the others failed the test even though they have worked in the apparel industry for years. Their skills might have atrophied in the 3 years that they were unable to find employment, but it is Chi Fung's own fault since they refused to hire the workers, and there is no reason to believe that these skills would not come back pretty much right away), and the one that was hired was fired the very next day. The ombudsman intervened and she was given her job back, but then fired again almost immediately. Over all, it was a very frustrating 5 hours. I guess that is all the important stuff. Scott Nova talked to us a bit about the WRC and the Designated Suppliers Program and some other stuff that probably isn't very interesting to anybody who isn't on the committee. Let me know if there are any questions!

Interviews Begin for 2008-2009 Appointments

Monday, April 7 marks the beginning of the interview process for student appointments to standing committees for the 2008-2009 academic year. Interviews will take place on four separate nights (April 7, 9, 15, 17) over the next two weeks. We've received roughly 70 applications, which is on par with the numbers from last fall. The most contested committees, as per usual, include the Dean of Students Advisory Board and Campus Planning Committee.

Please note that ASM Shared Governance will be appointing students to new committees next fall. I'm particularly excited about the International Studies Advisory Board--a committee of students that will advise the dean of IS on programming, curricula and study abroad opportunities. Stay tuned...

Labor Licensing Policy Committee March Meeting

Well, we just had our meeting. This meeting was pretty much dedicated to coming up with a plan for next week's meeting with Scott Nova and Gregg Nebel (Friday, April 4, noon, TITU, everyone should come). We had an outside facilitator come in from the Office of Quality Improvement to help us come up with a strategy for our negotiations. With his help, we came up with our bottom-line interest and our best alternative to a negotiated agreement, and also tried to figure out what adidas' interests and BATNA would be. The structure of the meeting is going to be both Scott and Gregg at first, they will each give a brief report answering questions we sent them, then there will be time for us to ask questions, then we will move into the negotiation. When we are finished with that, Gregg will leave, and Scott will talk to us about the role of the WRC, and also the feasibility and implementation of the plan we come up with in the negotiation. Nothing new really came out of this meeting, since the entire thing was dedicated to planning for next weeks meeting, and to see how that plays out, come check it out next Friday, April 4, at noon, TITU!

Union Building Project - Design Advisory Groups

Design Advisory Groups (DAGs) will begin meeting to discuss various issues relating the Union Building Project beginning the week after spring break. DAGs are one of the ways the Union is trying to reach out to students and the campus community to both share information on the project and gather input. These are the seven DAGs:

1. Indoor/Outdoor Recreation
2. Foodservice & Retail
3. Sustainability
4. Interior Design and Art
5. Site Design
• City Approval & Community Connection
• Parking & Transit
• Accessibility
6. Programming and Operations
• Meeting & Conference
• Programming & Events
• A/V & Technology
• Administrative Offices/Function
• Building Support/Operations
7. Leadership & Involvement

I will be posting additional information on exact meeting times in the next couple days. If you would like to officially join any of the DAGs please send an email to unionbuildingproject@gmail.com or just attend one of the meetings. Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. Thanks,

Dan Cornelius, dcornelius@wisc.edu

Shared Governance Appointments in the News

The Badger Herald recently ran a story on the Shared Governance appointment process.

Read the full story here.

Remember that the deadline for applications for 2008-2009 positions is March 31. More information is available by clicking on the links to the left.

LGBT Issues Committee - 3/3

Much of our discussion was about issues relating to Transgender students, although we talked briefly about the LGBT community in general on campus including students, faculty, and staff.
We discussed basic improvements that need to be made in University Housing to make it more Trans-Inclusive. This would include options for students who identify as transgender and the ability to make this switch in the middle of the year. Unfortunately, University Housing uses only information from the UW system's common application, which is gender-binary (only allows male/female options). I will be drafting a new set of recommendations for University Housing for our report this year.
It was noted that the Registrar's office is very accepting and able to make name and gender changes on official documents.
Justin is working on language to define transgender for the purposes of the university and University Housing.
We discussed the University Housing Viewbook, which is sent out to all incoming students. It has a small section in it that talks about the housing LGBT Liaisons, gives contact information for Eric Trekell, the director of the LGBT Campus Center, and also informs that transgender students can contact the LGBT Liaisons for special housing considerations.
We also discussed possible reasons why so little has been done within the university while there has been a mandate to make all campus policies gender-inclusive (transgender-friendly).

We are basically trying to figure out how to make sure that the policies that are already in place are carried out and how to make the most effective recommendations for the campus.