UWM Elects New Student Association President

The UWM Student Association announced on April 10 that Emma Mae Weber was elected by the students of UWM as the new SA president.

Weber is double majoring in women and gender studies and journalism, advertising and media Studies, pursuing the LGBT certificate and is in the UWM Honors College. She is also still currently the president of Panthers Against Sexual Assault, a student organization dedicated to addressing, educating, preventing and responding to sexual assault on campus.

With students off campus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the debates leading up to the election were held via Facebook life, and the election was held via email ballot that was sent to students’ emails. Students were able to vote between April 7 and April 9 for the president and other UWM Student Association positions.

“I’m super excited, but it’s definitely a little strange being off campus and not being able to share [this win] with everybody else on campus,” Weber said.

In her campaign and going forward, Weber expressed that she has three main goals. The first is to raise the campus minimum wage to $15 per hour. Weber is a student employee, working as a peer mentor at the Student Success Center on campus.

“The first step is making sure that we can get access to seeing how expenses are being made,” explained Weber. “Then, being able to look at ways that we can maybe take money from areas that aren’t being utilized within the office, such as extra office supplies and things like that and use it towards student employees.”

The second focus of Weber’s plan is to make campus safer by working with Chancellor Mark Mone and determining how to better respond to situations, how to issue apologies and how to change policies to match what the students feel is necessary for their safety.

“I feel like UWM has had an uncomfortable number of violent situations that have happened,” Weber said. “It’s pretty apparent that there needs to be a change within how these situations are handled.”

Weber’s third goal is for students to feel that they have a voice in the distribution of segregated fees and other important decisions on campus.  Student government is in charge of deciding where the money from student segregated fees goes currently, but Weber is looking “to do more listening tours or referendums” to hear student input on these decisions.

“I want students to know that I am here to listen to them, and they can reach out to me in any way they can because I am totally willing to chat about policies, about concerns, really anything,” Weber said.