The fate of FUSA’s new constitution now rests in the hands of the student body as the continuing saga of the document draws to a close.
The new constitution passed unanimously in the FUSA Senate in an “emergency session” on Monday night. Now, the only step that remains is the ratification of the document in a campus-wide referendum scheduled for Thursday, March 3.
“This is just great,” said Becky Robinson ’05, one of the framers of the new constitution. “We spent endless amounts of time on this thing; it sometimes took on a life in itself. I’m glad to see it finally go through.”
However, the document did not pass without the incorporation of a few amendments.
A paragraph entitled “meetings” in the Declaration of Rights and Responsibilities was amended with the purpose of highlighting the procedures related to closed-door meetings, saying that those procedures will be outlined in the by-laws of the senate.
“In the by-laws, we’re going to require that voting records of each senator are in the minutes of closed-door meetings,” said Kristina Chomick, executive asssistant to the Senate and chair of the constitutional convention.
Newly appointed Senator Chuck Kehoe ’05 raised a concern at the meeting, questioning the responsibilities of the Director of Programming, an appointed rather than elected position under the new constitution.
“Programming has a really big budget, and I feel like we’re putting a huge responsibility in the hands of one person who wasn’t even elected,” Kehoe said to the senators present at the meeting.
VP of Senate Brett Ritterbeck responded publicly to Kehoe’s concerns.
“We’re trying to eliminate the possibility of having too many agendas here. You could have a FUSA President who made certain promises to the students,” he said.
“With an appointed director of programming, there’s less confusion about whose agenda is most important.”
Ritterbeck further assured the Senate that this was not despotic in any way by saying the appointment is checked by other elements of FUSA and that the programming director can be fired if they are performing poorly.
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