In its first meeting of 2008, Student Council ushered in the New Year by introducing a new take on its constitution and bylaws, responding to institutional problems that have plagued Council for almost a year. If approved by Council, students will be asked to vote on the proposed constitutional amendments in a University-wide referendum during spring elections.
According to Jack Wilson, chair of the committee Council established to review its constitution and bylaws, the revisions aim to make processes clearer and more precise.
"The changes are meant to fix issues that we have been having in the past year ... enabling Council to spend more time on student issues," Wilson said.
The most controversial change so far has been the removal of the transfer student liaison's and the first-year president's ability to vote, Wilson said, explaining that the measure would help stabilize the number of representatives in Council and prevent representatives from disproportionately representing their constituents. The two offices had been granted the right to vote as representatives rather than simply serve as proxies after the passage of last year's constitution. According to Tom Bryan, graduate College representative and a member of the committee, the termination of voting rights was justified by the fact that the transfer liaison and first-year president were already constituents of their school representatives. This change prevents any one school in the University from gaining more votes simply because first-year and transfer representatives are members of certain schools. He said he hoped this change would "encourage students to get in touch with their school representative."
Transfer Student Liaison Jason Goldstein, a student in the College, said while he appreciated the efforts of the committee, he feared that taking away the first-year class president's and his own vote would cause new students to lose a voice in student concerns.
"I'm not voting as a College representative," Goldstein said. "I'm voting as a transfer representative, and I'm trying to help create an inclusive environment for transfers."
After the meeting, Goldstein said some members on the committee did not understand the transfer experience and how it differs from that of the normal undergraduate.
According to Wilson, one of the more notable changes to be made to Council's constitution is a standardization of how schools within the University are represented in Council, responding to concerns that arose earlier this fall.
"The current bylaws left it open to a bunch of different interpretations and methods for determining representation for the various schools," Wilson said. "What we wanted to do was to nail down one concrete method and came up with a fairly simple, straightforward method."
He explained that if the changes to the constitution go into effect, each school would get one representative and an additional representative for each 1,000 students in that school.
Committee members assigned new duties such as administrating legislative procedural tests to both the representatives and officers to the The Rules and Ethics Board, which investigates alleged violations of the Constitution and bylaws.
According to Bryan, this will mark the first time in Council that the officers will be tested on the bylaws and procedures they are elected to uphold.
Wilson said these revisions "will allow people to figure out where they need to go more efficiently and that will enable them to serve students better"
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