ASUM establishes board to aid Sustinabilty Center coordinator

by Jayme Fraser | March 11, 2010 | Montana Kaimin

As the University of Montana works to achieve the sustainability goals outlined in the Climate Action Plan, the ASUM Sustainability Center may now be better able to coordinate student efforts toward meeting those objectives.

The ASUM Senate approved a measure Wednesday night to establish a seven-member board to oversee and assist the center’s director. All other ASUM agencies — such as Childcare and Transportation — already had a board to assist them.

“Right now, it’s pretty much me and a few interns,” ASUM sustainability coordinator Erica Bloom said. “It would be great to have a board to offer their ideas and direction for doing more outreach on campus.”

Three of the seats are reserved for ASUM senators; other interested members of the campus community will fill the remaining four.

Also, the senate approved a change to election bylaws that would require petitions for an addition to the ballot to be due the Wednesday before Spring Break instead of that Friday.

Sen. Will Selph said the change would make it easier for the Elections Committee to verify student ID numbers of those who signed.

In other business, the senators passed a resolution encouraging the Board of Regents to not reduce the number of seats available to Montana students for the “WWAMI” medical school program.

The program is an agreement with the University of Washington’s School of Medicine that allows students from Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho to pay resident tuition for a medical education that offers apprenticeships in the five states. The program acronym is made up of the beginning letter of each state. The program was developed to strengthen medical support in states that do not have their own medical school.

A limited number of openings are partly funded by state dollars in the hope that, after rotating through several internships in the region, students will practice in the same communities after graduation. Though the Montana Board of Regents has said it won’t reduce the number of seats available this year, the future is uncertain as the state faces budget shortfalls.

“For Montana’s extreme shortage of doctors, WWAMI does great work,” Sen. Kip Barhaugh said. “WWAMI has a number of programs that work to bring graduates back to Montana.”

Barhaugh noted that Montana ranks 43rd for the number of medical degrees per capita.

During public comment, the Montana Public Interest Research Group encouraged ASUM senators to support the reestablishment of a MontPIRG fee for UM students.

Nearly twenty students and faculty members showed their support for reestablishing a UM chapter of MontPIRG, a state arm of USPIRG, which lobbies for the social and economic interests of students and youth.

The organization lost funding and its student fee in 2005 and has been working since to reestablish the group.

MontPIRG President Jared Trilling passed out the group’s Concept Plan to all the senators.The plan outlines MontPIRG’s goals for the future as well as how it proposes to spend the student fee.

Also, just after ending the meeting, political science senior Brad Dusenbery asked senators to speak with him since he could not attend the public comment period earlier that evening.

Dusenbery said he was concerned about the rising cost of tuition and noted that college students nationwide, whether in California, Missouri or Wisconsin, are protesting tuition hikes and rallying for greater state funding.

“We talk about it in Montana, but we see limited action,” Dusenbery said.

He asked the senators to actively petition state legislators and organize similar efforts in Montana that would grow support for higher education funding.

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