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Volume CXXXI, Number 20 |
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Vote reshapes student government
JAMES FISHER
ORIENT STAFF
A two-year adventure in bicameral student government ended
this week as a referendum to revise the constitution passed by a wide
margin. Students pulled virtual levers in an online poll that garnered
18 percent turnout, and the measure passed with 78 percent of the vote.
It was the third revision of the student government in three years.
The referendum, ratified last week by the Student Congress
in an 18-2 vote before the campus-wide poll, brings major changes to the
current student government structure. Currently, student government has
two houses, the Student Congress and the Student Executive Board (SEB).
"The biggest change," SEB chair Megan MacNeil
'03 said, "is getting rid of the executive board." The new system,
to be inaugurated next year, calls for a president and five vice-presidents
to be added to the Student Government, which will assume the combined
functions of the Congress and the SEB.
The Vice-Presidents will oversee standing committees which
mirror some of the influential College committees: student affairs, academic
affairs, facilities, student government affairs, and student organizations.
Current student leaders said that the committee structure will counter
a tendency of the current system to place too much responsibility on the
chair of the SEB.
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| Members of Student Congress and the soon-to-be-eliminated Executive Board at a recent gathering in Smith Union. After a constitutional referendum, student government will undergo massive changes. (Henry Coppola, Bowdoin Orient) |
Some members of student government were concerned that the
motion to alter the constitution was pushed through Student Congress too
fast. Joanie Taylor '03 said that "the proposed changes were brought
up late in the year" and that the Congress had considered voting
on the ratification prior to spring break. Taylor said that she voted
for the changes both in the Congress and the student vote. "The other
system just wasn't working for Bowdoin," she said.
Mike Taylor '02, who voted against the measure in the March
27 meeting, said that the plan contained "too many unknown questions,"
such as planning for the possibility that not enough students would run
for election to fill all the seats.
Online elections for the President and Vice-Presidents will
be held next week.
Others in student government lauded the new system as a
needed bypass around structural difficulties inherent in the current constitution.
MacNeil said that the vice-presidential system will ensure a wider distribution
of responsibility across the government. Ed MacKenzie '03 said that having
"a point person for every issue," the Vice-Presidents, will
make government more responsive to concerns of the student body.
The new constitution specifies that the President must have
at least one year of previous experience in student government. An amendment
that would have held the five Vice-Presidents to the same rule was withdrawn
after debate. Jon Staley '03, the IHC representative who brought the motion,
said that he would have preferred the Vice-Presidents to have a year of
experience. "Overall," he said, "I think the proposed changes
are good."
Many members of the Congress and the SEB said they expected
the new system to be more intelligible to the student body at large. In
the 1999-2000 academic year students ratified a constitution that created
a second body, then called Student Assembly, which was added to the executive
board, or E9. The Student Assembly was composed of elected class representatives
as well as the Vice-Presidents of the college houses, a representative
of the Inter-House Council, and the SAFC chair.
Last year, minor changes to the constitution transformed
Student Assembly into Student Congress, and the E9 into the SEB. The waves
of amendments left some members of student government suspecting that
student body had lost track of who was responsible for what. "Students
didn't really understand what the different parts of student government
did, and why there were so many parts," MacNeil said.
In a related move, the Inter-House Council, or IHC, proposed to modify its constitution to allow college houses to vote for their representatives to student government. Currently, the Vice-Presidents of college houses are automatically representatives to Student Congress. Under the IHC plan, any house affiliate, including house officers, could run for the representative position.