Changes that may be made to the structure, guidelines and agenda of the Student Association in the coming months will most likely reflect a growing concern for the integration of student group representation in student government.
Attention was brought to the issue of unity among the student body last week through a series of forums and events, a demonstration outside the Glenn G. Bartle Library and an election for the S.A.’s office of multicultural affairs.
“What we need to recognize is our community is not just one image,” said J. Nathaniel Reed, who was elected vice president for multicultural affairs on Friday with 42.13 percent of 769 votes. “Diversity is our culture,” he said.
Reed stressed that multiculturalism meant more that just ethnicity, and had to be valued in terms of sexual orientation, socioeconomic status and religious preferences, among other aspects of identity. “It’s more than a black-white thing, or a race thing,” agreed Annie Faya, chairwoman of the Intercultural Awareness committee of the S.A. “We don’t want to talk about diversity in the sense that we’re different.”
Faya spoke at the Assembly meeting last Monday about concerns she had with the lack of representation of minority students and multicultural groups in student government. She said that she would be working with the new vice president to restructure both offices with the interest of making students more comfortable with coming to the meetings.
“We need to grow right now,” Reed said of the multicultural affairs office. “Both for people who will come to the office after us, and for people who get involved now.”
David Belsky, the executive vice president of the S.A., who is working on changing the structure of some of the assembly with the help of a “task-force,” said he is considering hiring a “professional” to help integrate student groups into the S.A.
“I want to help provide student groups with more than just money, bureaucracy and rules,” he said. “We need a positive link.”
Other changes to the S.A. under Belsky’s plan would be a complete overhaul of the constitution and bylaws. While the S.A.’s constitution was rewritten last year, the bylaws were never changed, creating incongruities between the two documents. One inconsistency was made apparent during the VPMA election, as the previous vice president of the office resigned and no provisions had been made for electing a new official after a resignation.
Belsky said he was also considering changing the name of the Student Assembly to the ‘Student Senate.’
Both Belsky and Fiona Peach, chairwoman of the S.A. elections committee, said they are interested in changing the procedures for holding Student Assembly elections on the Internet.
“Every other major university does electronic voting,” Peach said. She added that it would be unlikely to have the system up for next semester, but that it would be probable to have it for next year.
According to Peach, the S.A. could expect much higher voter turnout for elections if students could vote online. Less than one-tenth of the student body voted in Friday’s election, which Peach said ran as smoothly as it could considering the time constraints of the Assembly’s constitution.
The formal changes to the structure of the S.A. as outlined in the constitution, including any additional offices and committees, would probably not be done until the end of the year, Belsky said. Committee meetings to begin the task of rewriting the documents will begin when the classes resume after Thanksgiving break.
“Hopefully, these changes will make the student body more interested,” Belsky said.
According to Faya and Reed, the need to get minority students more interested in student government affairs is dire.
“There was and is a sincere concern that people feel marginalized,” Reed said.