Constitution controversy

Six amendments to the USUSA constitution were voted in by 74 percent of the student voter population last week after being proposed by the executive council.

Changes included:

• Removing the slash from “USU/SA”
• Changing references to regional campuses to “RC”
• Removing the Academic Senate Pro Tempore position as a voting member of the executive council
• Adding behavioral conduct to the definition of “good standing” required for officers
• Giving the executive council the authority to put an officer on probation without approval from the Hearing Board
• Grammatical changes

The presentation of these amendments was scrutinized by students, as all six changes were grouped together and decided on by the student body as a whole.

“It seems like such a silly thing for them to put it on the website like that. Like surely it was just a mistake,” said Seth Merrill, a student who started an online petition calling for a re-vote in which the changes would be presented and voted on individually.

“I got this feeling like, unless someone tries to do something about this, it’s not going to get done,” Merrill said. “Everyone is just going to complain and talk about how it should have been changed, use that ‘voteno’ hashtag, but I just feel like nothing would have been done. So I just sat down, made the petition, trying not to be rude or attack anyone, just to try and be critical.”

Merrill’s petition calls for a re-vote of the constitutional changes, but USUSA President Douglas Fiefia said it isn’t that simple.

“How do we go back and tell those people that their votes don’t count? If we were to run a special election, from our experience last year, the voting turnout is a lot less,” he said.

Fiefia said in retrospect the issues should have been separated on the online voting ballot.

“We didn’t think of it, so I don’t think that is to the fault of the elections committee or IT who uploaded it and put it all together,” Fiefia said. “I think once the issue came up, it was too late.”

Casey Saxton, USUSA student advocate vice president, echoed that statement.

“In looking back on it … I do see the student concern of them all being clumped together, especially when you’ve got something substantial like the change of putting an officer on probation,” he said. “I feel bad certain people have felt like it’s something that we just tried to cram all into one yes (or) no vote because that really wasn’t the case.”

The petition has more than 170 signatures. Merrill said he would like to get a group of students together and address the executive council about the concern.

Nathan Laursen, USU’s media program coordinator, uploaded the changes to the voting software. Laursen received the document of the changed constitution and sent it to the webmaster to upload to USU’s website. Laursen then summarized the changes, in the order they appeared in the constitution, to put with the non-live link of the potential constitution. Laursen said the software didn’t allow for a bulleted list or an active link to the new constitution.

“Regardless of the software, I was under the impression the whole time that it was going to be just a yes or no vote for all changes,” Laursen said. “If you don’t like one, you should vote no in that circumstance, in my opinion. If I were a student and I had the ability to vote, if I wasn’t comfortable with one phrase, you vote no. And I think that the valid arguments may be that they did want to pass some of them and some not. But there is no conspiracy to try to hide the other changes.”

There are three scenarios where a repeal of the changes could occur. Students could present a petition with 15 percent of USU students, including distance education campuses, which would include roughly 4,172 people. In another scenario, the executive council could hold a special election. The last option includes a student could go to the Hearing Board, claiming the changes are unconstitutional.

One of the changes, which was proposed and has now passed, was to give the executive council the authority to place an officer on probation with a two-thirds majority vote if the officer is “deemed to have acted in a way that is unbecoming of the appropriate office.”

Last week the executive council recommended putting Nickoles Clason, senator of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, on probation, following a failed impeachment vote for “dishonesty and lack of integrity.” However, they did not have the power to do this at the time.

Saxton said this was not a direct reaction of the incident with Clason, but the process did point out the issue.

“I do think that the situation last week highlighted some problems with officer behavior and what authority there is or is not … and I think that the biggest thing for me is that an officer could not, as it is currently written, be placed on probation for anything other than academic issues,” he said.

Fiefia also said the amendment was not related to the disciplinary action to Clason.

“What we did feel uncomfortable with, and I think why the board decided to vote on it unanimously, was that the current system states that the only people who have power to put anyone on probation or impeach anyone is really administration,” Fiefia said.

Another of the six changes added behavioral conduct to the definition of “good standing,” instead of just academic requirements. Since the vote passed, it is now defined in the constitution as “free from major USU Student Code violations and/or student conduct probation.”

The vote also eliminated the position of academic senate pro tempore, a representative for the academic senate who is voted on by the senate as a representative on the executive council. However, the position of executive vice president is also supposed to represent the academic senate. The executive council’s reasoning for eliminating the position was that there were potentially two people doing the same job.

“They got rid of a position on EC so now the voting dynamic has changed a little bit. Nothing major, but you’ll probably very rarely see the president vote now because there is going to be very few ties,” Laursen said.

Although the vote to pass the constitutional changes is final, some students are still planning to fight back.

“I’m just trying to get some people together who feel even mildly strong about this and go to the next executive council meeting (on) Tuesday … and not have them recall, but to ask them to appeal the changes they made,” Merrill said.

— dahdahjm@gmail.com