Undergraduate senators teed up to begin large reforms to the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) constitution at their Monday meeting. The constitution has not undergone significant revisions in approximately 10 years, according to Senate Chair Micheal Brown ’22.

Brown asked senators if they were interested in joining a nascent committee on constitution reform, comprising members of the Undergraduate Senate, Graduate Student Council and ASSU executive team. The ASSU legislative bodies will eventually vote on the committee’s proposed recommendations, which will then need to be voted on by the entire student body to take effect.

“Some parts of it are unintelligible. Other parts are contradictory. Other parts are just counterintuitive,” Brown said of the constitution in its current form. “There’s a lot of work that has to be done.”

He emphasized the commitment that comes with joining the committee, stating members would need to become very familiar with the current wording and couldn’t “play around” in the job.

Senator Alexis Mack ’22 raised concerns about individual professors giving final exams during “week 11” and said she was working on creating a formal template to simplify communication with deans and department chairs in hopes of discouraging the practice. Many classes are not administering final exams this year due to COVID-19 and instead giving students “continuous assessment spread through the quarter, which could include several spaced take-home exams in place of a single final exam.”

Contact Sam Catania at samcat ‘at’ stanford.edu.