ONCE AGAIN, we've reached the point in the school year when prospective candidates for different positions of student leadership begin to besiege students across Grounds, armed with petitions and pages of signatures.
This spring's election season has the distinction of being one of the most highly anticipated in years, as the Honor Committee has put several constitutional changes on the ballot that are guaranteed to stir up controversy.
In the College of Arts and Sciences, it's a time of fierce campaigning between candidates for the Honor Committee, the Judiciary Committee and Student Council.
In smaller schools of the University, however, the atmosphere is a bit different. Take the Architecture School. Placed on bulletin boards in the main stairwell in Campbell Hall are flyers loudly advocating, "Be a UJC Judge!"
I've been at this University for three and half years and spent a portion of it trying to watch the UJC's every move. With all that, there's still no way I'd run for a spot on the Judiciary Committee. I just don't have the experience.
This highlights a big problem facing the Honor and Judiciary Committees today. While highly qualified candidates in the College are fighting tooth and nail for the right to represent their peers, smaller schools are quite literally picking people off the street to fill their Committee spots.
Serving on the Honor and Judiciary Committees is an incredible honor which comes with an immense responsibility. The student body is electing representatives to safeguard their rights and traditions. On both Committees, elected members not only set policy and vote on by-laws, but must also act as judges in the cases the Committees deal with. Both Committees have also faced lawsuits in recent years.
A past knowledge of issues facing the University would help a student serve on the Committees, but familiarity with the rules and procedures are the best experience. Ladies and gentlemen, Honor and Judiciary are not places for amateurs.
Yet, through their guidelines for election, the Committees are ensuring that amateurs are exactly what they're getting. Saying the 9,000 undergraduate students in the College of Arts and Sciences should elect three people to each Committee while the roughly 450 students in the Nursing School elect two representatives is absurd.
Take this past spring as prime example. While many qualified candidates lost races in the College, smaller schools didn't even have enough candidates. One current member of the Honor Committee decided to run during the election and won with less than 20 write-in votes.
The representative nature of the Judiciary and Honor Committees is getting in the way of more practical matters. The litigious nature of students today coupled with the high cost of lawsuits means these two Committees must be staffed with the most knowledgeable and best-qualified members of the University.
Besides, anyone who has held any leadership position knows the purpose of these Committees is not to make things difficult for smaller schools. They govern all students. While one member of each school should be on each Committee to provide perspective, the emphasis of University-wide elections should be on achieving the strongest Committees possible.
Clearly, the Committees should reach a more equitable balance. Student Council is a starting point, as the number of representatives are proportional to school enrollment.
Council is not the best answer, however, as anyone who has attended a meeting can attest. When the College elects such a large number of representatives, the assembly winds up with a few counterproductive people who represent excruciatingly small minorities.
While the ratio of students from the larger schools should be increased to reflect the populations in those schools, it should not be done by increasing each Committee's membership to that of Student Council's elected body.
The Honor System Review Commission made mention of expansion in this year's report, included under Proposal 14. The recommendation was only the broad suggestion to "consider increasing the size of the Honor Committee."
Both Committees should reduce the number of representatives from the smaller schools of the University in the interest of allowing the most qualified members of the University community a place on the Committees.
The Committees should also consider creating more spots for College representatives to equalize the number of students per representative, in the interest of equality.
(Brian Haluska's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at bhaluska@cavalierdaily.com.)
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