ASUO President Sam Dotters-Katz announced plans during Wednesday night’s Senate meeting to drastically revise the operations and structure of student government in the 2010-11 academic year.
Dotters-Katz’s plan would model the ASUO after the U.S. Congress, creating a bicameral legislature that would more than double the number of student legislators. The proposal attempts to expand the ASUO’s focus beyond financial matters and revise the role of academic senators. The proposal inspired shock and skepticism in much of the Senate.
Several senators said they were alarmed by the plan, which would move representatives for academic constituencies from the Senate to a newly created ASUO student assembly.
“I just wanted to say that this seems like a revolution,” said Sen. Noor Rajabzadeh, an academic senator who represents social sciences students. “And the best way to go about fixing things is reform.”
Under the plan, program budgets and financial matters would be administered by the Senate, while the student assembly would vote on resolutions and policy matters.
“I think there are a lot of things, real issue-based things, that go missed because we are focused on finance,” Dotters-Katz said.
The Senate currently contains 20 seats, of which 19 are filled. Ten senators are elected by the entire student body and sit on finance committees that allocate funds to student programs, departments and contracts. The other 10 are elected by students seeking degrees in specific majors. Academic senators are required to sit on faculty-student committees.
Dotters-Katz said the Senate’s focus on finance hinders the academic senators’ ability to reach out to their constituent groups. He suggested that the student assembly members in his new system would work with student advisory committees from their University departments. “I don’t think we as the ASUO work hard enough on making ourselves truly representative of students beyond finances,” Dotters-Katz said.
However, academic senators Rajabzadeh, Nick Gower and Sanford Weintraub defended their input on finances.
“Academic senators can and do work hard,” Gower said, “but we have to find better procedures internally … before we resort to this.”
Many at the meeting said they were blindsided by the proposal. “It’s just a huge idea you’re coming at everybody with,” Senate candidate Curtis Haley said. “I know I was, like, blown in my mind when you said it.”
Dotters-Katz said his proposal was not complete, but he expects it to involve 56 elected representatives. He expects to complete the project by Monday, and said he will work to enact the proposal with whomever succeeds him as ASUO president.
Dotters-Katz also discussed extending the 24-hour library program for the 2009-10 school year and asked the Senate if its members would support an estimated $56,000 request from its surplus account to finance the extension. Senators asked for more information about the success of the program before they made a firm decision.
The meeting was the first since candidates for the ASUO in 2009 began actively campaigning, but it remained largely free of discussion about the elections. Candidates abstained from wearing campaign T-shirts, although some audience members wore slate colors.
[email protected]