ASUSU structure won’t be revise, vote decides
Despite 13 years of debate over whether the Associated Students of Utah State University Executive Council needs to change the way it represents students – and, if so, how to best do that – this year’s council decided no restructuring is needed.
The council voted Tuesday 16-2 against ECB01-15, a bill that would have made several changes to the council, including dividing the council into separate groups and only giving one such group – the Legislative Senate – voting rights.
“We have been in a rut the last 13 years,” said ASUSU Executive Vice President Rex Hansen, one of the bill’s sponsors.
ASUSU Academics Vice President Jim Stephenson asked just what that rut was.
“The rut has been a psychological rut,” Hansen said.
Discussion on the new structure came after last year’s council, following the lead of councils in years past, voted to recommend this year’s council look at changing the structure. Last year’s council made the recommendation after it was unable to pass any restructuring legislation.
At issue has often been the issue of representation, as some argue students are over-represented because each college has a voting representative and other students are given more representation by vice presidents, who also have voting rights.
“What I value biggest … is representation and doing what students want,” said College of Engineering Senator George Tripp, who voted against the bill because he said it didn’t solve the problem of unequal representation. Instead, he said, giving votes to several vice presidents meant to represent the entire student body “spreads things out” and compensates for the fact that all colleges have one vote regardless of the size of the college.
ASUSU Arts & Lectures Vice President Trine Thomas said the problem isn’t the way ASUSU is structured but that councils always feel they have to figure out how to restructure it.
“The rut is the fact that we get stuck in the structuring [debate],” she said. She said the goal of maximizing the way council members carry out their office can be reached through reexamining each member’s charter rather than the council’s structure.
College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Senator Sarah Dallof said the bill would reduce the amount of time senators could focus on doing their jobs, which she said fall into two categories: programming and representation. She said if all the representative duties fell on college senators, they would end up having less time to focus on either aspect of the job.
After the bill failed to pass, Stephenson moved that the council recommend next year’s council not worry about restructuring unless it has specific concerns, a message different from that sent by previous councils.
Stephenson withdrew his motion after its constitutionality was questioned, saying he only wanted to go on record as saying next year’s council did not have to worry about a restructuring recommendation.