Students, staff and faculty protested a proposed amendment to the Student Senate constitution at the Senate meeting Feb. 23. The amendment would combine Senate’s diversity and gender issues executive board positions to make room for a new current issues director position.

Andrew Dillard, chair of the internal affairs committee that proposed the amendment, said the current issues director would bring needed information to Senate. Those opposed to the amendment, including the current directors of diversity and gender issues, feel it contrasts the university’s reputation for promoting diversity and will put too much work on one person.

“UW-Platteville is beginning to be recognized as a campus that excels in diversity education,” Carlos Wiley, director for the Multicultural Educational Resource Center , said. “I see this merger as a step backwards in that mission for this campus.”

Jennifer Mason, a graduate student at UW-P, said that the UW-P mission statement says the university seeks to educate and serve the needs of all students, especially those of women, minority, disadvantaged and nontraditional students. Mason said that in order to meet the needs of these students campus shouldn’t combine the groups that advocate for them, but create even more because they are separate issues and each deserve a great deal of attention.

Wiley agreed with Mason.

“On our campus gender and diversity issues are not combined,” Wiley said. “We can work together, but there is a reason they are separate issues. As director of diversity there is no way if they added this on to my responsibilities that I would be able to do all that work by myself. Having one person do those things would be awful daunting.”

Andrew Dilliard, Chair of the Student Senate Internal Affairs Committee, said that the Senate cabinet is allotted $3,600 to pay its members. Because of this, the Internal Affairs Committee decided that to add the current issues position to the cabinet without lowering pay for the other positions, two of the current positions should be merged. They chose the Diversity Director and Gender Issues positions because they were the most compatible out of the current positions in the cabinet.
Dillard emphasized the need for the Current Issues Director position, arguing that there are many problems on campus that no individual cabinet member could address.

“There are a lot of issues that are really simple to solve, but Senate does not have the capacity to take care of,” David Dregne, Senate president, said.
The Internal Affairs Committee, which consists of senators Eric Bracke, Andrew Lewis, Allan Sulzer and Brandon White, sought to research ways to add the current affairs position without cutting pay for the other positions. In its research, the committee found that of the 12 other four-year schools, 10 had combined cultural and gender issues, UW-Oshkosh and UW-LaCrosse had not.
The proposed change to the constitution met with strong criticism during Monday’s meeting, but Dilliard said outside of the meeting he had received more positive feedback.

“I’ve had a lot of people speak to me and say they’d like to see these changes,” Dilliard said.

Dregne said he had talked to many students, constituents and other senators who did not want to voice their opinions at the meeting for fear of creating negative sentiment between themselves and opponents of the change.

After the meeting, Internal Affairs planned to change the name of the combined position from Multicultural and Gender Director to Diversity and Gender Director, which Wiley had suggested during the meeting. The committee agreed with the idea, feeling that the new title was more inclusive of groups on campus, including LGBT campus members.

Jens Lindner, president of international student club, said that on a campus of predominantly white male students, diversity and gender issues are especially important.

“I can only urge you to rethink what you are doing here,” Linder asked. “For every one person here there are 10 to 20 students who believe what we do. We are the students you are representing and we are urging you to rethink this.”

Both current directors agreed with the students, staff and faculty that spoke against the amendment.

“Both of us hold meetings with full agendas and I don’t think one person can fill both these needs,” Vanessa Martinez, director of gender issues for Senate said.

Tameaka Bryant, diversity director for Senate, said she goes to a meeting almost every day as part of her position and if this position were combined it would be impossible for the new director to attend these meetings and those that would be required for gender issues. Bryant said the director could send a delegate to go to some of these meetings, but felt it was necessary for the director to attend these meetings his or herself to be effective and get to know their constituents.

Dregne said that after the meeting there was some discussion among the Senate leadership about potentially changing the pay structure of the cabinet to include both the new Current Affairs Director position as well as both the Gender Issues and Diversity Director while keeping the same pay for each cabinet position.

Senate will meet at 5 p.m. on Monday March 2 in the Pioneer Student Center to discuss the amendment further and vote on whether or not to pass the amendment.