I’d like to begin this article with a correction. I stated in my article of March 4 that the parking proposal in front of the Student Government Association would reduce the number of parking spaces on campus from 1800 to 1500. The proposal actually would reduce that total by 96. I apologise for any confusion my mistake has caused.
In this week’s meeting, SGA tackled Resolutions 29 through 32. These resolutions represent the continued restructuring of SGA that officially began a few weeks ago. Each of the four resolutions brought before the assembly was passed by a large majority.
Resolution 29 restructures voting procedures for SGA elections, as well as disbanding the “Spirit Committee,” a branch of the Public Relations Committee. Elections are now held electronically over CamelWeb, so SGA has deemed the rules for conducting polling at physical locations (and the procedure for re-counting the votes) redundant and unnecessary.
Resolution 30 allows SGA to bypass a student referendum in passing changes to the SGA constitution, or “C-Book.” The Commission on SGA Restructuring proposed this resolution, and the assembly passed it because “the resolution (Resolution 29) proposed changes that were largely nonsubstantive.” A look through Resolution 29 shows that this is the case — the resolution only changed the election procedures that were made redundant by the switch to electronic voting, and the rest of the changes, besides the termination of the Spirit Committee, were a re-formatting of already-existing language.
Resolution 30 also stated, however, that a referendum on Resolution 29 would not be necessary because “respective parties have already been informed and participated in amending the committees amended” — in other words, many members of the student body (specifically those most knowledgeable about the amendment process) had already had a chance to voice their opinions during the amendment process.
That does not seem to me a valid excuse for curtailing direct democracy.
SGA can override a required referendum — and changing the C-Book requires approval from the entire student body via a referendum — with the consent of 4/5 of the assembly. That does not mean they should override a referendum whenever that is possible. The amendments of Resolution 29 might be cosmetic, and perhaps a referendum would have merely mired a simple issue in campus politics, but the assembly should refrain from bypassing their constituents when a more controversial C-Book change arises. If the members of the assembly want increased political participation amongst the student body, they should keep the political process as open to the student body as much as they can.
The remaining resolutions (Resolution 31 and Resolution 32) changed procedures for impeaching a member of the SGA Executive Board and restructured the class committees, respectively. The requirements for impeaching an Executive Board member have been lowered to make it easier to remove incompetent members from their positions, thus raising the bar for conduct in those positions of power. Members can now be impeached by both the SGA assembly and their respective committees or constituents.
The greatest point of contention regarding the structure of class councils was whether the class-elected Judicial Board representatives should serve on their respective class councils as they currently do. Corey Testa ’10, Chair of the Judicial Board, argued that they should not, because they serve their respective classes by providing unbiased judgment, and also because the information they receive in J-Board hearings is confidential. For that reason, they have little to report to their fellow class members.
Other members of the assembly argued, on the other hand, that J-Board representatives have the same responsibility to report to their respective classes as class SAC representatives have, and should therefore not be exempted from this responsibility by being allowed not to attend class council meetings. In response to this disagreement, several members of the assembly proposed severing the links between these four J-Board positions and the four classes by filling these positions through school-wide elections instead of through class-wide elections, and by replacing the position held by class J-Board representatives in the class councils with another elected student position.
This last proposal seems to me the best option, since the duties of a J-Board representative have almost nothing to do with direct participation in class events, whereas the primary purpose of the other class council members, such as the SAC representative and the Class Social Chair, is to organize social events. Moreover, J-Board should be made as independent and distinct from external student groups and political organizations as possible to minimize bias in hearings. Perhaps the class councils should be required to solicit a semesterly or monthly report from their respective J-Board representatives rather than tying up an entire class council position on a representative that lends little expertise to carrying out the functions that the class councils most frequently perform.
