In the words of Student Council President Lauren Tilton, Council has had its fair share of both triumphs and "tribulations" this past semester. For the next academic term, Council looks forward to approving a new set of bylaws and minor changes to its constitution that promise to put Council in order.
According to Tilton, Council's successes this semester included making progress regarding student transportation issues and awareness of student safety through forums and by reviewing programs such as SafeRide.
"I think we've done a good job of informing students and including everyone's voice at a University-wide level," Tilton said, adding she was especially pleased with efforts by Council to respond to the work of the Commission on the Future of the University, including its environmental sustainability report. Prompted by confusion throughout the semester concerning bylaws and investigations of its members, Council has also made efforts to clean house. This has involved tightening procedures by creating a Rules and Ethics Board, according to Tilton. Other measures aimed at creating more efficient processes for the approval of contracted independent organizations also helped improved the way Council is run, according to Vice President for Organizations Catherine Tobin.
"It makes turn-around time [for CIOs] faster and less cumbersome," Tobin said, adding that changes to appropriations rules have allowed Council to keep better tabs on how CIOs are spending money by imposing more limits on the time frame for spending appropriated funds.
Though Council has worked to make itself more efficient, the semester did have its troubles. The year began with questions about whether space allocation procedures had been followed correctly, as well as questions about who, in the absence of a Rules and Ethics Board, should deal with procedural problems. Issues later arose about whether the College was being underrepresented in Council. The Board was not appointed until later in the semester, after many issues had been resolved.
Tilton acknowledged that Council "could have done a better job," adding "We all need to continue to learn from each other, as we all have trials and tribulations ... as we work to interpret governing rules."
According to Vice President for Administration Jack Wilson, Council has been working on new bylaws and minor changes to the constitution that will clear up conflicts between the current Council bylaws and constitution. The changes are intended to fix some of the problems encountered this semester and to ensure Council runs more smoothly in the coming term.
One change in bylaws deals with how schools are represented in Council.
"In general, the bylaws ensure that representation of the College is done equally and fairly so that one person in the College has the same vote as one person in the Law School or the E-School, and so on," Wilson said, noting that College representation was one of "the bigger issues" Council faced this semester.
Wilson also said new regulations aim to ensure the continual presence of the Rules and Ethics Board, requiring that the board for the next year must always be appointed in the spring. Wilson said this will ensure the board "will be there the entire year, so that if there is an issue, there will be a Rules and Ethics Board to take care of it."
Other issues dealt with by the Bylaws Committee include updating procedures for space allocations and for electing Council's executive vice president, a position the new constitution mandates is elected within Council instead of by the student body at large as in previous years.
Wilson said the new bylaws would be more organized and more concise than the current bylaws.
"The problems [with the current bylaws] were that you couldn't find anything and you couldn't really read them, there wasn't any flexibility," Wilson said. "So what [the committee said] was OK, let's help you find them and let's make them flexible enough so that we can get whatever we need to do done so that we can give everybody an opportunity to voice their opinion and don't prevent good things from being done"
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