StuCo Debates Voting Rights, Causes Dissent

Student Council (StuCo) held its first meeting of the 2016-17 school year and implemented changes to the structure of the committees this Tuesday. In an unprecedented move, the Executive Board reseated committee heads and elected members, announced the joint Policy and Services Committee, disbanded the Dining Hall Services and Constitution Committees and discussed voting rights. Many members felt that the length of the procedures was excessive.

StuCo president and senior Matthew Robbins created a plan for reform of the council during his campaign last spring. Vice president and senior Hojoon Kim and secretary and upper Jackson Parell plan to work with Robbins to effectively change StuCo in an effort to solve issues that students have illuminated in the past.

“We have a lot to work on but we are confident in our ability to get things done.”

Because Robbins anticipated the meeting to run overtime, the meeting began at 7:40 p.m. compared to the usual 8:00 p.m. The first order of business was rearranging the seating into permanent positions compared to non-assigned seats in all former years of StuCo. Students who were not elected but went to StuCo that night were not assigned seats and remained in the back of the room.

Although the board hoped that assigned seating will make attendance more efficient, members felt that the process took longer than needed because of the time it took to assign seats and numbers to each person. The Dining Hall Committee and the Constitution Committee were disbanded because they had “too little of a purpose to give them full committee power,” Kim said. Although Kim had not participated in StuCo before running for vice president last spring, he said that in past years Constitution and Dining Hall committees regularly made no reports and that the roles can be combined to form a “more inclusive” Policy and Services Committee. He hoped that the restructuring of the committees will reinforce the responsibilities of the chairmen. “There’s a lot of things Constitution can work with but by combining the workforce with Policy, we can tackle many more problems at once, especially with the school rule changes with sexual assault,” Kim said.

The board also established a new Technology Committee with plans to improve communication between students and members of StuCo through a website to facilitate document sharing and work to improve the election system. In the previous StuCo executive board election, students raised concerns of the iPad system and the lack of privacy it brought.

The council debated about whether or not to give select members, people that aren’t elected into StuCo, the right to vote during meetings on topics such as policy proposals. The executive board proposed that while select members—students who have been part of StuCo for more than a term—were welcome to join and attend StuCo, they do not deserve voting rights.

Upper and class representative Taylor Walshe said that although StuCo is an elected body of representatives, students who still attend meetings should be able to vote.

“Taking away their voting powers would give more control to the reps who have been elected, but I think the majority of the student council felt that if we want to be more democratic then we should allow select members to vote,” Walshe said. The council tabled the decision until next week’s meeting because they did not come to a conclusion.

Students expressed conflicting interests with the new and more formal atmosphere of StuCo. Walshe said that he liked how the new setup will put the council in the right direction, comparing it to the unproductive environment in the past.

However, he also said that most members are concerned that the changes are too “extreme and almost counterproductive.” The reseating took up the majority of the first part of the meeting because all of the class representatives, dorm representatives and committee heads had to be assigned and tested to see if they could remember their seat names. Walshe added, “...although we went strictly by the constitution, we voted on voting and did other tedious procedures that took up time.”

Upper and class representative Michael Bamah said that he did not like the first meeting because he found it to be “very long and ineffective.” He found that the seating arrangement process was very time consuming. However, he understood that the assigned seats will make attendance easier and more efficient in future meetings. “It was pretty unorganized, but I guess it was because it was the first meeting,” he said.

Parell felt that his first meeting serving as secretary went well. He understood the frustration of the members, and he explained that “people are often against change initially and this is what this year will be about.”

He was hopeful for the future success that comes from the reform. “We have a lot to work on but we are confident in our ability to get things done,” he said. The board hoped that they could implement future adjustments to help meetings run smoothly following the sudden changes from last night.

In order to create a less disruptive environment, Kim explained that the council will work towards “adopting formal rules for debate and motion presentation.” Next week, they plan to continue debate over voting rights and additional changes in structure and protocol for the upcoming year.