By james art Over the past decade, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s student government, Associated Students of Madison (ASM), has ensured the creation of 24-hour libraries, caps on tuition increases, distribution of bus passes, and maintenance of recreational sports facilities—although you’ll be hard to find a student on campus who knows it.
ASM, which represents over 48,000 students and is responsible for the distribution of 50 million dollars in individual university fees, plays a key role on campus as a shared governance apparatus, but many students are still not informed of what ASM is.
“I’m sure they’re doing things that impact the community, but I don’t know what specifically,” UW-Madison junior Solana Quezada told The Daily Cardinal.
While other Big 10 schools like University of California-Los Angeles and University of Michigan consistently report voter turnout rates well above 15% of the student body for their student government elections, UW-Madison’s ASM struggles to engage with students as turnout election rates in the spring of 2024 drop to a record low of 2% of the entire student population.
“I have no idea what I would vote for,” Ryder Zvorak, a sophomore at UW-Madison, told the Cardinal when asked if he plans to vote in the spring 2025 ASM election.
In six other student interviews with the cardinal, the answers remained the same: Most were not informed about the spring ASM elections, who their representatives were, or how they could vote.
ASM President Dominic Zappia told the cardinal that the organization’s problem is not necessarily low voter turnout, but rather a lack of awareness of shared governance.
“Basically, it’s hard to engage with students on campus because there’s so much noise, so much information, so much RSO,” Zappia said.
Another explanation could be the passage of Act 55 in 2015
Signed by former Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-controlled state legislature, Act 55 overhauled the role of students from “active participants” with a voice in policy developmentof an advisory body which could only advise the chancellor.
“Since 2014, ASM has been an advisory, not a governing body,” ASM Legislative Council Chair Ethan Jackowsky told the Cardinal. “It stands for what ASM does, and the memory of it and the student population has changed over time. . . . I feel like a lot of students just aren’t aware of what we do.”
Now, almost 10 years later, ASM’s diminished responsibilities may be a contributing factor to the organization’s rapidly declining voter turnout.
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But despite these challenges, ASM and members of the UW-Madison administration have proposed plans to return students to the polls.
“We’ve been talking to campus stakeholders, administrators who don’t want to raise the visibility of the election and continue the partnership with the unions and recreation and have advertising and promotion there,” Zappia said. “We’re exploring more proactive things. We did a lot of tables at the Memorial Union last year.”
During a roundtable discussion last spring, university administrators told reporters, “We’re excited to work with ASM’s student leaders going forward, not just for turnout, but for students to appreciate the work that ASM does.”
Although ASM’s spring elections aren’t until March, efforts to connect with students may have already begun to manifest.
“I know that not many people vote in the ASM election, so I know that if I do, my vote can actually do a lot more than I think,” freshman Ishan Sridastava said.
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