Shaken by conflicts after the impeachment of two Executive Board members, Boston University Student Government looks forward to increasing communication and transparency with the student body next semester through constitutional reform.
During the SG Senate meeting on Nov. 30, SG passed an amended proposal that enables the Constitutional Reform Committee, made up of a coalition of students, to present the reformed SG constitution to the student body during the Spring 2016 election period.
The proposal to amend SG’s constitution was part of an initial suggestion brought up by BU Students Against Silence, in cooperation with other student organizations, on Nov. 16 to dissolve Senate following Senate’s controversial decision to impeach former Vice President of Finance Kimberly Barzola and VP of Internal Affairs Marwa Sayed.
A continuous conflict that ensued after the impeachments eventually led to the resignations of former Senate Chair Stephen Chang, former Judicial Commissioner Louis Vitti and former Co-Director of Social Affairs Noor Toraif.
SG President Andrew Cho, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences, said he has been amazed by the dedication so many students have shown in proposing to rewrite the constitution.
“BU SAS were so dedicated, and for them pursuing justice is to the T, and I really value that,” Cho said. “Even though it was hard to come to terms with them at times, I really value that they were so adamant about it, because if they weren’t, we would have taken the easy route and not really addressed this. I think that was incredibly valuable.”
Cho said this semester has taught him an invaluable lesson about transparency. He said he has also learned, however, an equally if not more important lesson on the necessity to compromise.
“To see things both ways, and realize that your actions have implications that you might want to assume aren’t there, I think that’s a huge lesson I took [from this past semester],” Cho said. “We should think of that [lesson] moving forward.”
SG approved its Spring 2016 Student Election Commission Chair Grace Cusick during their Senate meeting Monday. Commenting on how past struggles will affect the election, Cho said the wider conversations surrounding SG have become an opportunity for more people to run for office and bring new perspectives to SG.
“With all these different ideas, the [competing] slates will have to talk about it, and say what direction they want to take it. Even though the [new] constitution will be a middle ground, I definitely think that the elected slate will take it a certain direction,” Cho said.
Barzola and Sayed were impeached in the Senate meeting Nov. 9 after an investigation by Judicial Commission determined their failure to execute constitutionally mandated tasks. The impeachment resulted in the formation of BU SAS.
To fill the vacancy after Barzola and Sayed’s removal from office, Cho appointed former Senate Communications Director Yasmin Gentry and former Chief of Staff Akiko Endo as VP of Internal Affairs and VP of Finance, respectively.
Gentry, a junior in the College of Communication, said she is excited for the upcoming semester, as new initiatives like the Social Injustice Awareness Campaign and Gap Week continue to foster inclusivity and better community engagement with the student body.
“We’ll see a lot coming out of the Constitutional Reform Committee, and this was a semester of giving power to individuals in student groups, from having a referendum vote on ratifying this constitution to getting all these student groups involved in these big weeks we are planning,” she said.
Recently elected Senate Chair Courtney Bold, a senior in the Questrom School of Business, said Senate hopes to prepare new initiatives based on garnered student concerns.
“We are going to bring back the clicker voting system and try to integrate votes into the website so that anyone can check how their senator voted,” Bold said in an email. “One of my goals is to have senators undergo cultural sensitivity training at the beginning of the next semester to better allow them to represent the diverse student body in each constituency.
Judicial Commissioner Timothy Geraghty said though it is unfortunate that Barzola and Sayed were impeached, students have been able to realize problems within SG and its constitution.
“The conversation of representation and legitimacy was necessary in the sense that not all students feel like their voices are heard on campus,” Geraghty, a senior in the College of Engineering, wrote in an email.
Marlo Kalb, a member of BU Students Against Silence and part of the Constitutional Reform Committee, said the past month has deemed SG illegitimate and said she wants to see direct democracy without Senate representation.
“I want to see a complete overhaul. There are other models [of SG] at other universities that they have a student union that’s more of a direct democracy,” Kalb, a senior in CAS, said. “I don’t want to see an E-board, I don’t want to see a Senate. I want to see something different.”
Jose Godoy, also a member of BU SAS and a junior in Questrom, said he hopes the ratified constitution, to be put in place at the beginning of the Fall 2016 semester, will allow for better student representation.
“I would like to see a student union, a place with no hierarchy,” Godoy said. “[People within SG] need to clean Student Government of people that want to make it a hierarchal structure and the way to change it is to change the system itself. It will be good if people want to get involved with the task force to make student government a more welcoming place for everyone.”
Interesting thoughts Marlene!
Please keep us updated. My wife and I are very intrigued by the whole situation.
Keep it up sweetheart!
“Cultural sensitivity training”? Sounds a lot like the reeducation program that the University of Delaware had to abandon.