The Student Senate exists to provide specific services to students, namely the allocation of funds (approximately $53 of the nebulous “student fees” that all of us pay annually goes to Senate) and to oversee the revisions to the Student Code of Conduct.

It also allocates a number of scholarships to students and discusses issues that are relevant to students – e.g. safety, dining services, tuition hikes – with a mind to influencing the administration to effect solutions that are agreeable to the student body.

As any governing body should be, Senate is run by a set of rules. Unfortunately, we have too many documents, and the consequence of this is that the procedures we try to follow no longer cohere.

In order to set things right, the Student Body Constitutional Convention was created in the hope that the constitution, the document that speaks in the most general terms about who Senate is and what it does, would be revised.

Constitutional changes have been ushered in many times, but in each case, only one section was changed at a time. This led to piecemeal changes and documentary incoherence. These changes harm Senate’s ability to function effectively within its own set of rules.

Put differently, it’s tough for Senate to clearly understand how it’s supposed to process finance requests when its documents conflict as to how that should be done.

With this in mind, I want to turn to a letter to the editor written by Robert Berry that ran on Feb. 15.

Berry says he is “anxious” to vote against the changes offered by the Convention next week. His justification is that “one of the two new bylaws will restrict those who run for student body president to previous senators and other officers.”

Berry is referring to a proposed amendment that would require any student body officer (president, vice president or secretary) to have previously served as a “member of senate.”

Members of Senate include senators and officers, but the Senate also consists of appointed committee chairs, the advertising director, Web designer and general committee members.

Senate’s standing committees are staffed by more than just senators. Students join the committees when they want to get involved on campus and didn’t win an election or just couldn’t commit the time to being a chair or senator.

No student has ever been turned down from sitting on Senate’s committees.

The only committee that requires any competition is Finance, and individuals not selected to sit on Finance are invited to sit on other committees.

Therefore, the proposed amendment does not limit membership to only a few elites, it only asks for a marginal time commitment before running to ensure that we have candidates familiar with what Senate does.

Berry says that he “[has] never voted before in a student election,” and perhaps that’s why he is unaware of the number of candidates in recent elections who had no experience whatsoever.

Candidates who, if they had won a student body office, would have had to do on-the-job training about working first-hand with administration bureaucrats and learning the things Senate does and how to do them.

Moreover, there are other important changes in the Constitution. First, there are substantial changes like elevating the GPA necessary to hold office to a 2.5 for undergraduates.

Second, there are grammatical changes like making sure that Senate ensures rather than “insures” student rights on campus, and that the Membership Chair will check enrollment figures rather than “fiures.”

In conclusion, the Constitutional Convention has tried to solve a lot of the problems of the Student Senate.

Its membership comprised not only elected students, but also student representatives of Asian Council, the Association of Black Students, College Hispanic American Students, Student Foundation, Program Council and the Office of Leadership and Community Involvement.

The proposed changes were agreed to by all members. They want to see a more effective Student Senate. A lot of students on campus like to complain about how the administration needs to change and things that suck.

Voting against the changes leaves the Senate’s documents a joke, and means that those things become even less likely to change.

If you care at all about this school and having your voice heard, help Senate be more effective, and vote Yes on the referendum.

About the writer:

Ben Hatch is a senior political science major. He can be reached at [email protected].