ASUSU Council writes changes to constitution
ASUSU Executive Council proposed a series of changes to the ASUSU constitution at its meeting Tuesday.
The changes are primarily cosmetic, said ASUSU administrative assistant Jordan Hunt. He said because of a software change there were various formatting issues with the current constitution, which was last updated in 2005.
“There were a lot of glitches and inaccuracies,” Hunt said. “We just opened a Pandora’s box of changes.”
Another aim of the changes is to reduce the amount of legal jargon and edit out any unnecessary wording in the constitution, said Kirsten Frank, ASUSU executive vice president.
Some of the major changes to the constitution regard graduate students, regional campuses and distance education representation, said ASUSU President Erik Mikkelsen.
The council voted last week to dissolve the Graduate Student Senate, due to lack of student interest in senate positions and to streamline the legislative process, said Cami Jones, graduate student vice president.
All students will now be represented in the Academic Senate in which undergraduate and graduate students can serve as senators for their respective colleges, Jones said. The Academic Senate will also contain one seat for a graduate student senator, she said. The proposed ASUSU constitution revisions will reflect the Graduate Student Senate changes.
The proposed constitution changes will also provide more representation for regional campuses and distance education students, Hunt said. Currently the regional campus councils are appointed and are represented in the USU main Logan campus by a single representative.
Under the proposed revisions, the regional campuses and distance education students will vote for their own executive council that will represent all regional campuses and distance education students, he said.
Under the proposed revisions, the student judicial bodies of the grievance board, student court and hearing board will be combined under the hearing board. These bodies are currently in charge of separate disciplinary and dispute resolution functions involving student elections, the student code and other areas of student conflict and discontent, Hunt said.
Another proposed amendment is to change the title of the current ASUSU position of campus diversity and organizations vice president to organizations and campus diversity vice president.
Current Diversity vice president Brooke Evans proposed this amendment because “some people are intimidated by the title. They don’t think they are cultural enough to run for the position, while most of the work I do is with clubs and other organizations,” she said.
The council will vote on the proposed changes at its meeting Feb. 14, and the student body will be able to vote on the revisions during elections in late February and early March.
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