In My Opinion: SGA provides rationale for amendments

We asked the SGA to explain the amendments to the SGA Constitution that students can vote on. Here are the amendments broken down by the Chief Justice of the judicial branch.

In+My+Opinion%3A+SGA+provides+rationale+for+amendments

Add the First Year Council as an executive standing committee in the executive branch

First Year Council was an executive ad-hoc committee implemented this year as a trial run for engaging first year students. The purpose behind the FYC has been to allow first year students to learn more about the different aspects of SGA and then to decide where they would like to be involved. The success of FYC is evident by the larger senator turn out in this election. A good portion of these students running for Senate as well as expressing interest in applying for the other branches and committees indicates that FYC did a great job at not only engaging first year students but retaining them in SGA.

Remove the Commissioner of Elections from the executive branch

The Commissioner of Elections has been removed from the Constitution because the Executive Staff discussed the role of the position and concluded that it was redundant given the Chief Justice position on Executive Staff.  The position was only needed during election cycles so we believed that the duties of the position could be added to the Chief Justice.

Remove the college presidents from the legislative branch

Within the past three years we have not achieved a full senate. The position was an internal legislative position and the Executive Staff as well as the Senate believed it to be moot; both branches passed the amendment. It was not something the Executive Staff proposed unilaterally.

Pro: remove another layer within senate to give senators more personal responsibility. The idea that a senator would not be allowed to go speak with their college dean didn’t make sense to us. We believed that all senators should have more responsibility and not feel as if “its not their duty” to speak to a dean. We wanted to remove any unnecessary red tape within the legislative branch.