The Student Government Association made significant changes to its constitution during a Senate meeting Feb. 4.

The changes, which include Senate Bill 05, Senate Bill 07 and Senate Bill 04, will change the way the organization is run.

S.B. 05 would add a students’ bill of rights to the proposed constitution while S.B. 07: Constitution Referendum would allow students to vote to instate the proposed constitution during this spring’s SGA elections.

“These concepts are an accumulation of different conflicts and challenges we have had in the past three years,” said Christopher Duke, vice president of Intergovernmental Affairs.

At the beginning of each academic year, SGA goes through a constitutional review.. The last time that students voted to approve a constitution was in 1999. The proposed new constitution is four pages long.

“My hope is that by passing this new cleaner version of the constitution, we can have a very clean bill that students can understand for the first time as opposed to asking where something is in the 20 pages that we go under,” Duke said.

S.B. 05 passed with little discussion, and S.B. 07 was moved to the Intergovernmental Affairs committee.

S.B. 04: SGA Modernization Act of 2009 would establish the office of the vice president and would make the three existing vice presidential slots into chair positions.

The office of the vice president would also be the president of the SGA Senate and would remain as an elected position. The vice president would appoint the three chairs, which would be voting members of the executive board and the senate.

Executive Sen. Zac Peal, who proposed the bill, said this bill would clarify which candidates are running for each position.

“This is a maneuver to understand who you are voting for in two people instead of potentially ten,” Peal said, “If you don’t understand what you are voting for, it is not legitimate.”

Sophomore Sen. Alex Simons said she believes the bill would increase cohesiveness of the senate.

“We are supposed to make things better on campus,” Simons said. “We can’t do that if we cannot work together.”

Vice President of Student Representation Alexis Konevich urged the Senate to vote against the bill, saying that if a representative of one class is appointed to a chair position than that class would be short one senator.

The candidates appointed to the chair positions must be elected members of the Senate with two consecutive semesters of experience in SGA.

The bill would have the chairs serve 10 office hours a week compared to the 15 hours served by the current vice presidents.

Konevich also said that other ways to increase cohesiveness exist such as members following the orders of superiors.

“We can’t write into law that [SGA members] have to be nice to each other,” Peal said. “I can write into law how [SGA members] relate to each other because of how [they] are appointed.”

S.B. 04 would go into effect in the 2010-2011 school year unless SGA President Meghan Kuentz vetoes the bill and it is not overridden.

 

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