The Boston University Student Government voted on an amended proposal in their Senate meeting Monday that allowed a task force to write a new SG constitution. The proposal enables the Constitutional Reform Committee to present the new constitution to the student body during election period in the Spring 2016 semester.
The original proposal, brought forward by SG President Andrew Cho, stated that the task force could propose three constitutions that would be ratified through a student body-wide referendum during the election in March or April. Sign-up for a committee seat would be open to all students until Jan. 24, and members of the task force would have to attend the majority of committee meetings, the proposal stated.
Upon discussion over Cho’s proposal, Anushka Pinto, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences and a CAS senator, proposed an amendment to Cho’s original proposal. The proposed amendment allowed the committee to present only one constitution to the student body and would pass with a two-thirds majority vote. Pinto’s amendment passed with 35 senators in support and one abstention.
Cho, a senior in CAS, said the passing of the proposal was “a long time coming,” and now students can look forward to SG improving.
“The whole process of going through that discussion and then arriving at that amendment gave people that confidence in what they were passing,” Cho said after the meeting. “I’m glad that senators had their buy in [the proposal], and it wasn’t something I necessarily made happen. They took it and improved it.”
SG also conducted an election for a new Senate chair. Courtney Bold, a senior in the Questrom School of Business, was the only candidate running for the position. She won with a unanimous vote.
Bold, previously a Questrom senator, said with her new position she will work to improve transparency and communication in Senate.
“I am going to bring back the [previously used] clicker voting system, where we will be able to integrate votes into the website,” Bold said. “I’m going to work with the communications department to increase publicity and the ability of Senate as a forum for students to come and bring their concerns.”
Former Senate Chair Stephen Chang, a senior in CAS, stepped down Nov. 13 amid controversies surrounding old blog posts Chang wrote, The Daily Free Press reported.
SG also voted on two proposals presented by Environmental Student Organization Senator Juliahna Green. The first requested $4,000 of funding from Senate to purchase a “reverse vending machine” that allows people to recycle bottles and receive 5 cents in return. The second proposal requires all Senate-funded events to provide composting and recycling options and prohibits the use of Styrofoam at the events.
The first proposal passed with 35 senators in support and one against while the second proposal passed unanimously.
Green, a sophomore in CAS, said the proposal to fund a reverse vending machine would help foster environmentally conscious behavior among BU students.
“The whole idea we had behind this was we wanted to economically incentivize environmentally responsible behavior,” Green said during the meeting.
Several attendees said the meeting effectively started the reform process in SG after several weeks of controversy. Hamilton Millwee, a junior in CAS, said the meeting successfully reconciled the problems between Senate and the student body.
“Every senator already agreed for a while that some change are needed to be made to the constitution,” Millwee said. “The question was just how and under what kind of circumstances, and on what timeline. [The task force proposal] simultaneously gives students the ability to change something.”
Vice Senate Chair Daniel Collins and interim chair for this meeting said the passing of the proposal ended debates that had been ongoing in Senate for the past month.
“This meeting was incredibly groundbreaking in that we all came to an agreement,” said Collins, a sophomore in CAS. “We had progress. It felt like the room seemed to be in agreement in what was agreed upon and we can finally see the effects of some reforms in Student Government.”
The Senate cannot be taking credit for this proposal. They took the SAS proposal and simply stripped it of the language regarding Senate illegitmacy/dissolution and pushed the constitutional task force timeline back to next semester… and they had to be pressured by multiple student groups before the meeting Monday to get this to pass. Honestly very rude of them to not mention the work of the student body in this process.