The ASSU Governing Documents Commission (GDC) concluded a series of public feedback sessions on a new draft of the ASSU Constitution Monday evening. Although no non-ASSU-affiliated students attended the final feedback session, the GDC’s co-chairs — ASSU President Michael Cruz ’12 and ASSU Parliamentarian and Senator Alex Kindel ’14 — said they are happy with the constitution’s direction and are optimistic about its chances of being passed by the ASSU Undergraduate Senate and Graduate Student Council (GSC). If approved by these bodies, the new constitution will require two-thirds approval by students on the spring campus-wide ballot.
The GDC, which the ASSU Executive first charged with the task of rewriting the constitution in spring 2011, based the Constitution’s reforms on suggestions from internal officers and members of the Stanford community.
One major change within the new governing document is the creation of two standing joint committees, a Joint Administration Committee and a Joint Nominations Committee, chaired respectively by the ASSU President and Parliamentarian. The committees would include representatives from the Senate and GSC and would meet three times a quarter. The second committees reflects and effort to expand oversight over the Nominations Commission, a branch of the ASSU that nominates students for University committees.
The new constitution also seeks to compact the Executive, GSC and Senate bylaws into one document.
Both Cruz and Kindel cited increasing centralization and improving the relationship between the Graduate Student Council (GSC), the Senate and the rest of ASSU as one of the new constitution’s major objectives. The GDC executive report noted that there is currently “very little communication between” the GSC and the Senate, which, according to Cruz, weakens ASSU advocacy for students.
Rather than having one unified voice approach the University with petitions and recommendations, the current structure of the Senate, GSC and Executive creates inefficiency and redundancy, Cruz said.
“One of the hugest disadvantages to this disconnect has been the decentralization of advocacy,” Cruz said. “It would be significantly more fruitful to have a singular policy advocacy group instead of multiple policy advocacy groups all representing ultimately the ASSU.”
The GDC executive summary of the changes described the old governing documents as including “large swaths of irrelevant regulations.” Cruz noted that the documents also used circuitous legalese, which made the documents dense and difficult to understand. Kindel agreed, adding that the existing constitution contains contradictory clauses that often make it nearly impossible to interpret.
The new 32-page ASSU Constitution is half the document’s former length. The proposed constitution also requires that the ASSU Executive charter a Governing Documents Commission every three years to reexamine the functionality of the document’s regulations.
According to Cruz, the commission decided on every three years so that every Stanford student — except master’s candidates — would see at least one GDC during their time at Stanford.
“One thing that we wanted to make sure never happened again was inheriting a document like this, a document which hasn’t seen significant change in more than a decade,” Cruz said. “One of the problems [with the old structure] was that nobody ever did have to look at it to see where the document was. And now it will have to be looked at at least every three years.”
Because of negative feedback from ASSU senators, Kindel and Cruz have altered or abandoned some of their initial amendments, including a proposal to add a second vice president to the Executive and to decrease the number of elected undergraduate senators from 15 to nine, according to Kindel.
Ratifying the new document
The GDC held four open feedback sessions for the student body to ask about the new governing documents and make suggestions. After the constitution was presented on Feb. 25, the feedback sessions were all held within a week.
Although both Cruz and Kindel said that the first three sessions were well attended, they did not give approximate attendance figures.
Sjoerd de Ridder, a graduate student and GSC representative, said that he saw eight people at one of last week’s feedback session, although most of the attendees were ASSU representatives, he added.
“I think it [is] not surprising that the people who feel strongly about the ASSU and its constitution are already in some way or another involved with the ASSU,” Ridder said.
Students can still contribute their opinions and questions over email until the Senate’s vote this Tuesday.
If the Senate and GSC both approve the governing documents through a constitutional amendment, the document will be subject to a student vote during the spring election. The new constitution must receive approval from two-thirds of student voters — with at least 15 percent of the student body voting — and the Board of Trustees before taking effect next fall.
Since the objections and concerns of most of the ASSU officers have already been addressed, Kindel said he expects the document to pass following public forum debate.
“Not too much is contentious right now,” he said.
The Senate tabled a discussion about the constitution at its Tuesday meeting this week, while the GSC is scheduled to begin debate on the document today. Both groups will vote on the amendments next week at their respective meetings.