Syracuse University’s Student Association will vote on Monday to potentially update the organization’s constitution.

SA’s Constitutional Review Committee drafted the changes, which include clearer language and expanded voting rights for committee chairs, among other things.

Created in the fall semester, the temporary Constitutional Review Committee, which consists of five members of the SA cabinet and assembly, was tasked with reviewing and revising the SA constitution.

SA initially created the committee to address an issue surrounding the voting rights of committee chairs in the SA cabinet, freshman SA member Ryan Golden said in an email.

Previously, the chair of the Diversity Affairs Committee did not have a vote in the cabinet because of the wording of the constitution, Golden said.

The current constitution states that each committee chair has the ability to vote in the cabinet. But because the SA assembly didn’t approve the establishment of a Diversity Affairs Committee until spring 2017, that committee chair’s voting rights are not explicitly included in the constitution.

The updated constitution will include a qualification system that would allow chairs of long standing committees to vote on cabinet, as long as the committees met certain requirements, Golden said.

The change ensures that members “don’t have to worry about not getting a voice and a vote on cabinet,” said Emily Gallagher, chair of the Constitutional Review Committee. “They can just have it.”

She added that there were some parts of the constitution’s language that were unclear, so the committee looked at how the wording and structure of the document could be reworked.

The committee made changes to the constitution to increase its clarity, adaptability and relevance, members said. Gallagher said one of the committee’s goals was to create a constitution that would not have to be updated in upcoming years.

And Golden said the committee wanted to make a document that would be “adaptable.”

“Hopefully with the new constitution and changes we’ve made, this document won’t have to be changed for several years to come,” Golden said.

Ethics was the main focus of many of the committee’s conversations, Golden added. He said the committee wanted to ensure that the changes could not lead to abuses of power.

“We are the organization that supports and, in a way, regulates other organizations on campus,” Golden said. “We wanted to make sure that an organization with that much power and authority was in check.”

Potential changes to the constitution include a revision to the rules surrounding the ability of non-SA students to participate during SA meetings, and a change in the description of the vice president’s role, Gallagher said.

If passed, the new constitution would allow for students outside of SA to address the organization during meetings, Gallagher added.

“(The revision) allows students to come in and voice their opinion,” she said.

The updated constitution would also state the vice president’s right to serve as a spokesperson along with the president, which is a practice that’s currently happening but is not explicitly written in the constitution, Gallagher said.

Other proposed changes include the addition of the historian position to the constitution and the adaption of the document’s language to include gender neutral pronouns, she added.
If approved at Monday’s meeting, the revised constitution will be presented to the SU student body to be voted on, Gallagher said. An amendment to the constitution requires approval by vote from 10 percent or more of the student body, according to the SA constitution.

Published on February 25, 2018 at 9:18 pm

Contact India: irmiragl@syr.edu