Although some Student Senate forums have been held in the past at Madison College, the event held on Nov. 8 was the first official town hall. 

The main focus of the town hall was equity and inclusion. The meeting was hosted in person at Truax with live streams available at all the regional campuses. 

“It was great to see a lot of people attend,” said Jack Shockey, Student Senate Vice President of Administration and Finance.  

There was a  total attendance of 55 attendees across all locations and online. This includes 39 students and 16 college employees.   

“I think being something that’s a little bit new though, it’s going to take some time to figure out how to best run the town halls. So we’re definitely still learning, but it was great just to see and connect with some students that did attend,” said Shockey.  

Student participation was mostly done via an online form. Some questions were ranking the order of importance of different missions of the Student Senate while others were more specific to how students feel about their experience at the school.  

The online version of an open mic was opened in which students could write in submissions about what could be going better for students and to ask any questions. 

Anonymous responses about improving the student experience included: 

“More engagement in person.” 

“Bus passes might be more convenient for students if they were connected to the OneCards instead of being a separate card.” 

“More information on how to attend clubs.” 

“More involvement with UW.” 

Much of the feedback focused on in person events and information that is specific for different majors.  

“The more feedback we get and it really helps us kind of decide where we want to move in the future and kind of make plans for courses of action that we’re going to take,” said Sean Green, Student Senate President.