As the Sconz has already pointed out, yesterday I met with Rep. Mark Gottlieb (R-60) about the legislation he is going to introduce that would require
be subject to state open records and open meetings requirements. Also with me were WSL Services Director and ASM Secretary Kurt Gosselin and ASM Vice Chair Tom Templeton.
In general, students both within our organization and in ASM that we have spoken with about the issue have been in support of idea that the portions of student government that oversee the allocation of seg fees be subject to state open records and meetings laws and we expressed that sentiment to Rep. Gottlieb. In fact ASM has had a policy dating back several years of acting as if they were already subject to open records and open meetings laws.
We did however have a couple of issues with the way the specific language of the provisions was written. In particular we felt that the word “direction” could potentially be interperted to include groups that are on the recieving end of segregated fees, like the WSL. One of the primary reasons for scheduling the meeting with Rep. Gottlieb was to figure out what groups he intended to require to comply with the open records laws. He indicated to us that his orginial intentions were to just require those parts of student governments that actual oversaw the allocation of seg fees to comply. (Sidenote: for ASM that would be SSFC, Student Council, Finance Committee etc. Every UW school has a different student government structure, hence the need for the vague language.)
He also promised us that if the bill was going to move forward that he would certainly reconsider the specific language that was used to clarify exactly which student groups he was intended to subject to the open records and meetings laws. We also suggested the language be reworded to read
any association created by students at the University of Wisconsin System or the technical college system with one of its explicit purposes being the supervision of the expenditure of revenues derived from mandatory student fees
I also spoke yesterday afternoon with Michael Moscicke, who is with United Council, and he informed me that Rep. Gottlieb’s office was already working on revising the language to take into considerations our concerns on that subject.
We also expressed concern that the legislation would require Student Judiciary to not only have open hearings, but also to deliberate in an open meeting as opposed to their current closed door deliberations. Rep. Gottlieb was not as sympathetic to our concerns in this area. He was initially very opposed to the idea that Student Judiciary should even be allowed to deliberate in a closed door session. After some explanation from Kurt about the types of decisions being made by Student Judiciary and the desire for them to not have to deliberate in the same room as the individual or groups about which they are deliberating, he was a bit more open to the idea and said that he would have to think about it.
A final potential objection that we brought to his attention was the relationship between student governments and the University and how that affected the privacy of students protected by FERPA. Right now there is not really any sort of clear precedent as to whether or not student governments are subject to FERPA restrictions. As actually figuring out the answer to that question would require going through all of the relevant University, state open records and FERPA laws, it will take lawyers actually looking into the subject to answer the question definitively. However, UW-Madison senior legal consol Nancy Lynch has told us that she believes that the way the legislation is worded it definitively makes it clear that student governments are not a part of the University and thus open records requests of ASM would not be subject to FERPA. That of course assumes that the relevant records are not being kept by professional staff hired by the University, who would be subject to FERPA, but rather by someone like Tyler Junger or Tom.