When deciding on which candidate to vote for in the FUSA election, many students learned about the candidates’ agreement to abide by the newly written Constitution. While this promise sounds legitimate, some students are uninformed regarding the contents of this document.
The Constitution is supposed to be re-written every four years. However, according to Charlie Knights, the Chair of the Constitutional Convention Committee, it was re-written after only two years because it “put band-aids on the previous Constitution.”
The Constitutional Convention was brought about by a resolution in reference to former FUSA President Eddie Muniz’s reluctance to give a State of the University Address.
There was equal representation among the different branches of FUSA. The eight members consisted of four Senate representatives, two COSO representatives, one Programming representative, and one Class Council representative.
The first time the Constitution was presented to Senate, it lost by only one vote. Because it requires a two-thirds vote to pass, the committee held another open forum to get feedback from students. Knights explained, “Every session was open and advertised, whether taken advantage of by the student body or not.”
The committee had been revising the first Constitution since Nov. 3, 2010. According to Knights, “The mission was to make any necessary changes to help FUSA better match the needs of the students.” FUSA members researched other universities’ Constitutions and spoke with members of other universities in order to gather the best ideas.
The main issue dealt with restructuring Class Councils and redistributing responsibilities among them. The committee decided to cut down the executive branch in an attempt to create “more ownership within branches to allow them to flourish on their own,” claimed Knights.
The new Constitution passed on March 2, 2011. Each Class Council now consists of the class president and four other senators, as opposed to the previous set up of three Class Council members with eight senators. “Now the Class Councils have more defined roles and a stream-line view,” said Knights.
These changes of the Constitution will be implemented with the conclusion of the current elections. While the representatives currently sit eight per class, there will now be a FUSA President and Vice President as well as five senators per class after the conclusion of the elections. The Election Commissioner will then decide upon a date for a second round of elections in which students will vote for a president for each class from those five senators chosen on Tuesday.
With this change in the Constitution, the Class Councils will be better able to keep the figurehead role of the class president. The class president will be a senator with added responsibilities. In this way, FUSA “will no longer lose out on the most qualified and enthusiastic candidates,” Knights said. In addition, it will “keep the choice within the student body.”
Each senator will have a specialty in order to deal with student issues in specific areas. They will be responsible for their own initiatives involving student life and academic committees.
“We are trying to change the negative image of FUSA,” stated Knights. “We are interested in the more general mission, which is to program for the students, student advocacy, and club management and development.”
Leave a Reply