ASUSU passes 19 bills Tuesday
It’s long overdue.
As part of a larger project aimed at restructuring the general laws for the Associated Students of Utah State University, the Executive Council passed 19 revised bills Tuesday.
The council will vote on one more revised bill next week.
The bills will be added to the complete book of ASUSU’s general laws by the end of the year.
In an effort to essentially make the general laws match ASUSU’s constitution, Ericka Ensign, Academic vice president, along with her committee, went through every piece of legislation the council has passed since 1969.
“We’re going to make a new general law book. We have made it accurate, we’ve made it clear, we’ve made it concise and we’ve made it current,” Ensign said. “All those things will make it so that people will know their general laws better, that they are followed better and that it’s just easier to use.”
There are three levels of legislation for the council: bylaws, general laws and the constitution.
Bylaws will change on a yearly basis – charters, elections bylaws and scholarship stipulations, Ensign said.
General laws are what ASUSU follows and can be passed within the body. To be changed, the constitution requires general referenda from the students.
In years past, members of the council summarized the general laws, sometimes inaccurately, and put them in a book. However, it did not have the backing of legislation, Ensign said.
Since October, the committee has examined every piece of legislation that was not a resolution, but a bill. Bills directly affect the council and become binding general laws.
The committee compiled many of the bills into one, making them easier to understand.
“Although it’s not something that students necessarily care about, indirectly, it does affect the way their representation is functioning,” Ensign said.
Although the process to pass all of the bills was slow, President Celestial Bybee was happy to finish the project.
“This is something I’ve dreamed of doing for the last year, but I never had the time,” she said.
Revisions to the bills dealt with items such as the administrative assistant selection process, posting of office hours and organizing the structure of ASUSU.
However, because Tuesday’s meeting went longer than usual, the council had just enough members to vote. Some members left the meeting early, and other members of the council were unsure whether their reasons for leaving were legitimate.
Aside from passing the revised bills, the council passed a resolution to appoint two more students at large to the University Student Fee Board.
Those students will represent the student voice. Currently the board consists of 10 student officers and three students at large.
In other business, the council voted to hold next week’s meeting at 5 p.m. instead of 5:30 p.m. because of the ASUSU awards banquet the same evening at 6 p.m.
The council will hold two more meetings before the end of the semester.
Matt Ekins, ASUSU student advocate, said he introduced the resolution with the hope to better represent how the students feel about changes in student fees every year.
-mmackay@cc.usu.edu