ABOUT A year ago, I wrote a column about how student government here at the University had survived spring elections by the skin of its teeth, fending off an aberration dubbed "the consensus clause" by supporters by only half a percent of the vote.
Now, a year later, a minimally moderated version of that same proposal that would just as effectively set the status quo in stone has made the climb to the ballot box. If we as students wish for our traditions of self-governance to retain meaning, especially those pertaining to student administration of the honor system, then voters have only one choice: Reject the consensus clause.
Proponents of the consensus clause point to the fact that the single sanction, the honor system's central and most controversial feature, could be amended by a student referendum in an election where only 10 percent of the student body votes. They contend that this threshold is far too low adequately to protect the single sanction from determined minorities.
However, while they have correctly cited the requirements for passing an amendment to the Honor Constitution, anyone who believes that voter turnout would be that low in an election where a proposal to modify the single sanction was on the ballot suffers from delusion. Turnout hasn't been that low in a spring election this decade. The threshold may indeed be low, but in recent spring elections the percentage of the student body voting has far surpassed it, reaching 32 percent last year, according to the University Board of Elections.
Ignoring this fact, consensus clause proponents have suggested a remedy that is completely out of proportion to the problem they say they intend to solve. Savethesanction.com, their Web site, describes the proposal as mandating that "any change to the Single Sanction be approved by at least 33 percent of the student body," which would seem to imply that the low standard of 10 percent is being replaced with something more reasonable. Their arguments in this paper and elsewhere have echoed this reasoning. However, this referendum does not accomplish that end. In the actual legal language of the amendment is the requirement that amendments to the single sanction will be valid if "at least 33 percent of the student body have [sic] voted in favor of the amendment."
The implication is that in a voting system that only reached 32 percent overall turnout last year in a hotly contested election, the requirement that 33 percent of the student body all vote on one side of an issue as contentious as the sanction would make it virtually impervious to change. For the turnout on the pro-change side to be that large, the turnout for the election overall would have to be massive and beyond what may be reasonably expected any time soon. The solution for a low support threshold for changes to the sanction is not to replace it with an impossible one.
Consensus clause proponents add to their previous arguments that "endless debates about the sanction" have taken up much of the Honor Committee's time, hindering the committee's other important matters. In response to this allegation, David Hobbs, the Honor Committee chair, said, "The sanction can sometimes act as a lightning rod and divert some attention" from the committee's work, but "we're certainly going places" with the discussion. This hardly resembles the quagmire that consensus clause proponents suggest.
Furthermore, we do not elect the Honor Committee to take care of the little problems and ignore larger ones. This is especially true considering that last spring a referendum asking if the Honor Committee should seek alternatives to the sanction passed with almost 60 percent of the vote, indicating a clear desire among students for at least the chance for change. It is this democratic desire that most frightens consensus clause proponents, and it's the reason why they are attempting to amend the rules beyond the reach of the voting public.
However, by protecting the sanction from democratic forces, consensus clause proponents are undermining the very system of student self-governance that surrounds it. They have no desire for consensus, per se. Rather, they seek to paralyze the amendment process so that even a sizeable consensus opposing them would not be enough to alter the current system. A vote for this amendment is a vote for the belief that student government by majority is broken and that tradition should always trump efforts to improve the status quo.
In a sense then, this referendum is not about the single sanction at all. It is about our commitment to the institutions of student government at this University, and that is why both proponents and opponents of the single sanction itself must vote against this referendum. Should a vote on the sanction actually come in the next few years, there will be no shortage of interested students ready to fight bitterly over it. But this amendment, with its underhanded stab at our democracy, is repugnant to the honor system itself. Reject it as you did last year to preserve our honor.
A.J. Kornblith's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at akornblith@cavalierdaily.com.
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