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StuCo split: Bylaws dissolved

News-Letter article · 91st session · dated December 4, 2003

Reporting about the SGA, not a record of it: The Johns Hopkins News-Letter published this and the SGA did not write it, file it, or approve it. The archive holds it because the article itself uses the phrase “student council”.

Read this article in The News-Letter ↗

StuCo split: Bylaws dissolved

By Eric Ridge · The Johns Hopkins News-Letter · December 4, 2003

The referendum on a new Student Council (StuCo) constitution passed by 67 votes in school-wide balloting last week, paving the way for major changes in the way StuCo is organized and requiring new bylaws to be written.

BoE Co-Chair Matt Bouloubasis formally announced that the referendum passed by a vote of 389-322 at a StuCo meeting on the Tuesday before the Thanksgiving holiday. He told those in attendance that StuCo would need to draft new bylaws in accordance with the constitution. Bouloubasis also told Class Representatives that they no longer held positions according to the new constitution and that they would need to run for Senator positions in elections that will be held on Monday and Tuesday. Senior Senators are not subject to the new vote.

The new constitution, which was proposed by freshman Jered Ede, divides StuCo into two separate groups, the Student Assembly and the Executive Council. Ede said that when the groups are meeting and voting, he would like them to not be separated and for them not to influence each other. The Constitution also splits StuCo into four legislative committees in charge of overseeing finance, legislation, appointments, and performance of governing bodies. The constitution does not, however, establish groups like Spring Fair that are now labeled as independent.

In an effort to quell fears that these groups would suffer funding difficulties, SAC Chair Ben Wardlow said on Monday that the SAC would operate as usual during the transition process. In an email addressed to students, Director of Student Involvement Jeffrey Groden-Thomas wrote that "The SAC will continue to be advised by me and my office and through my office will continue to operate under the currently held policies in the Blue Book and the Addendum polices created this semester."

The acceptance of the new constitution was met with mixed reactions. Ede and proponents of the constitution say that it will help StuCo in the long run.

Ede said after the transition process, "once StuCo can start working again, I see a lot of optimism coming from this in the long run."

But StuCo members as well as leaders of the SAC criticized the plan, claiming that the constitution's acceptance threatens to paralyze StuCo during what promises to be a lengthy transition period.

StuCo President Charles Reyner said he wished Ede had talked to someone at StuCo before proposing the plan. "There were glaring holes we would have fixed," Reyner said.

In an e-mail he sent to cultural group leaders, SAC Cultural Liason Jon Groce wrote: "In my opinion, this is a disgrace that a constitution passed that essentially rendered student activities financing useless because of loopholes and lack of bylaws."

"It shocks me that Jered Ede didn't think about the consequences of his constitution," he wrote.

Wardlow said that the passing of the constitution was "not good in short run for campus."

Wardlow went on to say that if the organization process goes "longer than expected, student groups will be hampered."

This is a threat because of the potential length of the transition. Before they can conduct any business, StuCo must wait at least until the results of Monday and Tuesday's elections are announced.

"Student Council is dead in the water until we get that all done," said Groden-Thomas, referring to the process of electing senators.

Then, StuCo will begin to organize itself under the new constitution. The first order of business will likely be to establish a new set of bylaws to go along with the constitution. Reyner said that StuCo members have agreed to write the new bylaws during intersession.

"Student Council is looking forward to getting a strong set of bylaws before Feb. 28," Reyner explained.

Until then, there are wide-ranging implications for a number of groups. Until bylaws are written, there are no rules defining groups such as the MSE Symposium, Hopkins Organization for Programming, or the Student Activities Commission.

MSE Symposium was scheduled to be interviewing candidates for the job of Co-Chair, but since COLA is not established under the new constitution, that process has now been delayed.

Groden-Thomas has decided to run the interviews with the three elected COLA representatives each voting. They will recommend a candidate and then wait for bylaws to be written so that a group that assumes COLA responsibilities can vote on the candidate. The process could delay the selection of co-chairs until after intersession, although current MSE Symposium co-chair Payal Patel said that she was optimistic that the new co-chair could be named sooner.

Spring Fair Co-Chair Janet Chang said that there was concern that the constitution passing would cause major problems, but so far hat hasn't been the case. She said that they can still function and that the results had so far been fairly minimal.

"We were cautioned if this passed we would stop existing, but that is not possible," Chang said.

--Staff Writers Raphael Schweber-Koren and Ron Demeter contributed to this article.