Wisconsin Student Government - Get Involved

From the Desk of the President -

July 14, 2010

Hello All,

The Department of public instruction will hold on open hearing on July 30th about a proposed rule that would require a bachelors degree to be gainfully employed as a school nurse.  Some of you may remember Conor Smyth and Paul Gabriel speaking of this proposed administrative rule in a breakout session at the February Legislative seminar.  This rule is nothing more than flagrant discrimination against those holding nursing degree's from technical and community colleges, eligibility for school nurse should be based on competency, training, and experience.  

The Wisconsin Student Government will be attending the meeting to voice our support of the word "bachelors" being removed from the language. I am asking those of you whom are able to attend to join me in voicing our support on July 30th at 1:00 in Madison. Attached (click here) is a document from the District Boards Association with more details, please pass this along throughout your school and community.

Written comments can also be submitted to the Department of Public Instruction or myself and they will be passed along.   Feel free to contact me or any member of the executive board with any questions or comments about this matter.  Thank you for you support in this matter, hope everyone is enjoying their summer.

-Eric Gage

April 29, 2010

Hello All,

The Wisconsin Student Government has two new officers this year.  Our new Vice- President is Sarah Miller from WITC and Kevin MIller from SWTC is our new Administrative Finance Officer.  Let us congratulate them on their new positions, I have confidence that they will do an excellent job this year.

Thank you to Eric Wagner and Dave Carle for there service to our Wisconsin Student Government this past year.  Attached are the meeting dates for next year.   We will keep you updated throughout the summer as to what we are working on for next year.  Thank you all for your hard work this year, hope you all have a great summer!

-Eric Gage

March 29, 2010

Hello All,

On March 23rd the WTCS state board set tuition for 2010-2011 school year $106.00 for post-secondary educational credits and $142.20 for collegiate transfer credits, these rates reflect a 4.5% increase for both.  Nick Kaspersak, VIcki Breenes, Arber Rrushaj, Sam Aquino-Drohin, and myself attended the meeting on behalf of our Wisconsin Student Government to strongly urge the board to consider the gravity of their actions when setting tuition.  The WTCS system is feeling the strain of the economic situation by the massive influx of students entering Wisconsin's technical colleges, this in turn has stretched the fiscal resources of the WTCS system.  This was evident in the boards decision to go ahead with the tuition committees recommendation of a 4.5% increase for both post secondary and collegiate transfer credits.  The increase is from $101.40 to $106.00 for post secondary and $136.10 to $142.20 in for collegiate transfer credits, which in all reality is not the worst case scenario considering the fiscal shortfall  Although the board did not change the recommended increase amount I feel that this was not a total loss.  I sense that the board and many throughout the WTCS system have come to the conclusion that students, particularly the Wisconsin Student Government, have become more organized and unified in recent years, gaining momentum and a voice stronger than what has been seen in years.  Our voice can not simply be ignored, the opportunity's are growing for us are to share the role of shaping the experience for technical college students of Wisconsin, I strongly believe this is becoming more and more evident throughout the WTCS system.  A big thanks to all those that attended the WTCS board meeting, I appreciate it. 

The deadline for the contact information for the portability project is coming up on April 2nd. What is needed is  1. The name and email of whom to contact at your local newspapers to submit a letter for an editorial  2. The name and email of the PR or media relations staff member for your college.  3. The name and contact information for one other media outlet representative that serves your area, printed or electronic. Thank you so much to all those who have sent this in already.  We as the Wisconsin Student Government have set our path, let us see it through.  Thank you, I look forward to seeing you all in April.

-Eric Gage

March 1, 2010

Hello Everybody,

In the April meeting on Saturday in the other business portion we will be discussing a possible partnership between WACTE and WSG on our legislative days.  On February 25th the Wisconsin Association for Career and Technical Education held their legislative conference at Madison College downtown campus where we had our January meeting.

WACTE is comprised of faculty and administrators from Wisconsin's technical colleges, attached is an agenda for their conference.  I was invited to participate in their second panel discussion about helping faculty and administration to get students more involved with extracurricular organizations and other activities that can provide experience for greater career success.  After the discussion a member of the board for WACTE approached me about the idea of combining our legislative conferences as they are in the same week and our interests more oft than not align. 

My thoughts are that this would be great for us in numerous ways; as a group if WSG can establish relationships with other organizations that have similar interests then we are stronger for it; For legislative visits, if legislators can see a unified voice of students leaders, faculty and administration, that can only deepen the impact we can make for our causes;  The more interaction faculty and administration have with student leaders who exemplify why they should increase, and continue to, involve us in shaping how our respective colleges function and provide opportunity's for students to grow. 

I will be in communication with WACTE to see if there would be agreement on dates and possibly an agenda.  Nothing is final, at this point I am only exploring such opportunity, this is your organization and we make the decisions as a whole.  I would like to point out that we wouldn't have to join for every part of our agenda's, we could split up for parts.  When we discuss this in April I hope you will have your questions, comments, or concerns ready so we may have a efficient discussion.  Please do not hesitate to contact me in the meantime though with any questions.

The other business at hand would be the portability project.  Several testimonials have been received, thanks you to those who submitted them. This does not mean that more are not needed, so please continue to search for those stories, or if you have one yourself, please contact me! The letter is in a draft phase and being reviewed by several of our esteemed colleagues within the WTCS  system, so it should be ready for your approval in early April or possibly sooner.

I plan to seek your approval via email.  What I ask of you, Governors and Lt. Governors, is to get together with your WSG colleagues from your school to and gather some contact information.  The contact information would be

1. The name and email of whom to contact at your local newspapers to submit a letter for an editorial 

2. The name and email of the PR or media relations staff member for your college. 

3. The name and contact information for one other media outlet representative that serves your area, printed or electronic.

Examples of such could be, but are not limited too, a local free newspaper, a highly read electronic blog or media outlet for your area, a newsletter that goes out in your area.  I ask that these be submitted to me via email by April 2nd.  Thank you for taking the time to read through all of this.  Great things are on the horizon for our Wisconsin Student Government, lets keep the momentum going.

-Eric Gage

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