#1: 1^st Year Election is Unconstitutional.
#2: Student Senate Crossed the Line. - 13 Student Senators speak for all students of Pitzer College by approving a purely political statement.
#3: The failure of Treasurer Chris Wohlers to maintain and publicize budgetary bylaws.
#4: The failure to elect an Environmental Senator.

#5: Accountability:

From the Constitution:

Article III, Section 5. Attendance.
a. The Executive Board shall define and publicize the requirements for an excused absence at the first Student Senate meeting of every academic semester.
b. Any Student Senate member who accrues more than two unexcused absences per semester must immediately be replaced by a student appointed by the Executive Board unless a motion to preserve their membership is approved by a two thirds majority of Student Senate.  The senator in question may not vote on this motion.

The Executive Board never defined what counts as an "excused absence", during the first meeting or any other.  This is significant because now we have no standard for judging what excuses given for absences are legitimate, and which shouldn't be accepted.  (If the Executive Board had said during the first meeting (or any other) that "excused absences" will only be granted in the case of a personal or family emergency, that is a lot different than setting the standard at allowing excused absences for being stressed out or hungover.)

As a result, it leaves the door open for Senators to NEVER show up to a Senate meeting.  This is exacerbated by the fact that Executive Board Secretary Buddy Bennett admitted at the last Senate meeting that he doesn't do a good job taking attendance.

I'm not even advocating that we take a "harsh stance" on absences.  I understand that sometimes going to Sunday night meetings is draining.  But, as a non-voting regular student, I want someone making sure my representatives SHOW UP or have a good reason why not.  It's a discussion we should have had a long time ago.

This is a partial transcript from the final Senate meeting of the year on Sunday December 6, 2009.  My emphasis is supplied throughout the transcript, and my commentary is interspersed.

Senate Chair Brian Orser: [unintelligible] We need to finish before the end of the semester. To that end we need to deal with the issue of membership and the issue of our own legitimacy. There have been a lot of allegations made on the interwebs, about the senate, about this constitution being brought forward, about our current constitution, about the executive board of senate, and I’m not going to address all of those allegations in turn but there are a few primary issues. I’m not sure what’s going on behind me, does someone need to [unintelligible] ...

Those primary issues are this letter we received, they are our current constitution, and they are the bylaws of college governance. An incidental issue is the judicial council: its history and its [unintelligible]. Now we’ve been prompted by this letter from the dean of students to look into matters of compliance... I think there are enough people here who haven’t read this letter that I should probably read that letter.

Me, Your Humble Blogger: I have a question, I’m really sorry to interrupt you. Are we actually in discussion right now? Are we changing the order of the agenda?

BO: No, actually. I’m-- We don’t have normal status as a governing body right now; we need to address this before all other things. We cannot make decisions because the legitimacy of our government has been called into question. And as for the letter I’m about to read, our position in the college governance system is sort of questionable right now if you don’t mind.

I found this inaccurate and unnecessarily dramatic.  Senate has been terrible for the past semester, but to characterize it as illegitimate because Jim Marchant said so is ridiculous.

Sean Sullivan '10: If you don’t mind, can we just ask if people have read this letter, it’s a really long letter [unintelligible].

BO: I know for a fact that there are people here who haven’t.

I also found this annoying:  Orser essentially admits that he consults with certain Senators ahead of time, but not others.  Further evidence of this comes later.

Charles Butler '10: Then perhaps we might as well ask the author of this letter [Jim Marchant] to present it.

Charles points out that Dean of Students Jim Marchant was sitting in the room at the time, and I agreed with Charles: Jim Marchant would be the best person to explain the letter that he wrote and submitted.

BO: I would ask that I continue speaking without interruption for at least a few more minutes. If that’s okay. Thank you. The relevant section of the letter reads that there are certain positions which [unintelligible] people were appointed to standing committees of the college instead of being elected as required by the student senate constitution. Now those positions are indicated as one on academic planning, one on diversity, one on external studies, two on campus life, and all four of the aesthetics committee positions.

The issue here is that all of those positions are meant to be elected as per the current constitution of student senate. They were appointed by the executive board at the beginning of the semester. They should have been elected in the spring on the ballot upon which all of us were elected, but for legal reasons that ballot was incomplete.

(I don't know what "legal reasons" means in this context.)

BO: The ballot included the current constitution under which we are operating as well as the executed board. It also included several members who are on senate today. Most notably included Mr. [Hale] Shaw [’12] as sports representative, who no longer exists unfortunately as well as PAct representative position. Because the constitution, which changed the composition of senate, was on the same ballot as certain positions which were eliminated or changed, we have this issue. Hale’s disappeared.

The position of Sports Representative was added to Senate's composition two years ago, as an attempt to increase school spirit.  When we were revising the Senate Constitution last year, I don't recall anybody bringing it up.  Personally, I think Hale is a very smart and dedicated Senator and I value his input.  I think his talent is being wasted.  But when push comes to shove, his position doesn't exist, and Hale hasn't acted as a representative would be expected to.  He hasn't, to my knowledge, publicly solicited the input of Pitzer athletes, held athlete meetings, or brought sports-related issues to Student Senate.  If Brian is using this example as one of the terrible things that the existing Constitution has done, I think he should keep searching.

BO: Also, I believe Ms. [Meredith] Gabriel [’12] as a member, I believe her position has changed from elected to appointed. So she was elected to a position that became appointed.

This is exactly what should be happening all across Senate: we should elect students to every single position, even if it says in the Constitution that they should be appointed.  If there is anything positive that has come out of the larger debate about the new Constitutional proposal, it is that students want every position to be elected.

BO: Also, those elections did not include elections for judicial council as they should have.  We began the semester without judicial council appointments or elections.

And elections were never held, except for the First-Year Representative position, during the Fall semester.  I'll get into the judicial council debacle in another post.

BO: So that’s the context in which we find ourselves. The constitution under which we are currently operating also brought in in that same ballot, and that constitution is, in a certain sense, the point of this discussion.

The bylaws of faculty and student governance are the legally binding bylaws of faculty and student governance. They are made such by the bylaws of the College which indicates that they will be such. The bylaws of the Faculty and Student governance are in the faculty handbook alongside the governance section, section 4 of the faculty handbook, which is a sort of appendix on the composition of various committees, etc.

The issue here which I’ve been attempting to arrive at is that our current constitution is not actually congruous with the bylaws of faculty and student governance. In fact the constitution under which we are operating is in so many important ways, out of compliance with the bylaws of faculty and student governance that we find ourselves it seems in some sort of crisis:  What document is authoritative and what should be happening.

I will give a few illustrations: for example, Academic Planning Committee: as enumerated-- its membership as enumerated in the governance section 4 of the faculty handbook will be 4 appointed student members, yeah 4 appointed student members. In our current constitution, we read that there will be one elected position and two appointed positions.

So we have disagreement in number and what mode of selection. Now, this is a problem because there is disagreement. We cannot have a body which is constituted with disagreement, disagreeing documents. Now the reason that we have this situation, that we have this sort of disagreements is, is really unfortunate. Our current constitution was never taken to college council. Our constitution is actually not our official constitution. Two points on this. College council is the chief authority in the college governance system. But as far as we’re concerned, the college council is the highest body. The college council is the one that approves all changes to all of them--college governance.

Here is where I believe Brian is dramatically overstating the conflict.  Student autonomy is often stated as a core value of the college- the administrators and faculty don't care how we conduct ourselves as a body except when it interferes with larger processes of College governance.   The only reason Jim Marchant sent his letter to Student Senate asking it to comply with its own rulebook is when Executive Board illegally appointed several people to positions that are required to be elected.

And you know, this sounds technical, okay so, let’s just take our current constitution to college council. Unfortunately that won’t actually fix the issue, because the reason we have this issue is that if our current constitution had been taken and directly approved-- by this body and the student body-- had been taken to college council, they would have said sorry, it’s going to be a much longer process for you.  You need to make sure that your document and the bylaws of the college are in agreement. We could -- our current student senate constitution to the college council.

Now, that leaves us in a little bit of a bind, because in the faculty and student governance bylaws, it indicates that the constitution of student senate will be the student senate constitution found in the faculty handbook. There’s actually a legally resting place for our constitution. I can’t change some words and the cover page and say that it’s our constitution. Unfortunately, and I talked to professor [Stuart] McConnell about this, who spearheaded provisions of the faculty handbook, unfortunately because student senate is a very student sort of thing, they didn’t look at any of the sections pertaining to students.

Related posts:

1. ConstitutionWatch: Environmental Senator Since the start of the semester I've written a few times on the unconstitutional actions of the Senate Executive Board, and sometimes Senate itself, namely in...
2. December Debacles: Final Senate Meeting Part 1 ...