Cutting the number of Associated Student Government senators from 83 to 49 has brought efficiency and more involved senators to ASG, members said about the smaller Senate’s first quarter.
But Jonathan Love, a member of the student services and executive committees, said the changes in how senators are selected might have disconnected senators from the students they represent.
Senators voted to shrink the Senate last spring, with most of the cuts coming from dorm representation. Only 15 students represent dorms this year, compared with 42 dorm senators last year. The restructuring has proven successful, said Dan Broadwell, speaker of the Senate.
Although he had worried that fewer senators would mean less debate, he said he “couldn’t be happier” with the level of debate he saw in the recent supplemental funding meetings. Those meetings will set the tone for the rest of the year, said Broadwell, a Communication senior.
“I believe that the Senate has taken on a new sense of ownership and a new level of engagement,” ASG President Patrick Keenan-Devlin said.
Senators are more invested in the process this year, said Helen Wood, an ASG adviser and director of the Center for Student Involvement. With the lower number of senators, participants take ownership of their contributions.
“I think that more people think they have a voice,” she said.
Because senators now represent larger organizations such as Residence Hall Association and Residential College Board, senators are more engaged and are held more accountable to the organizations they represent, Broadwell said. Under the previous system, dorms would elect a senator at the beginning of the year, and dorm residents then would lose connection with ASG, he added.
In past years, senators would stay for the roll call at the beginning of the meeting then leave before voting on Senate issues and bills, said Keenan-Devlin, a Music senior.
“So many decisions of last year’s Senate were made by only a handful of representatives,” Keenan-Devlin said.
The cut in numbers created a more focused Senate by shortening inefficient debate, said Love, a Medill senior who has been involved in ASG for four years as a senator and non-senator.
But because dorm senators represent RHA and RCB instead of individual students in their dorms, they might not be as connected to student needs.
“The student body might be seeing senators that aren’t entirely in tune with what the students want,” he said. “Whatever connection we had to the student body at 81-plus, we’ve lost some of that connection at 49-plus – and we need to find ways to fix that.”
Bonnie Buik, a Weinberg sophomore living in Bobb Hall, said she did not know who her senator was and has not paid much attention to ASG besides its response to the recent Evanston City Council liquor ordinances.
“It seems like ASG is really exclusive,” she said. “If you’re in it, you know what’s going on.”
Weinberg senior Andrew Hill, who lives off campus, said he does not know who the off-campus senators are. He wasn’t concerned about his connection to ASG.
“I don’t really know that ASG does that much, anyway,” he said.
The size of ASG has fluctuated in the past. Former ASG president Rob Freedlander, Communication ’83, campaigned in spring 1982 on a platform to reduce the size of the then-“ASG Forum.” The Senate ultimately was reduced from 70 to 35 spots, he said, but it has since risen.
There is a direct correlation between the size of ASG and its efficiency, Freedlander said. A smaller Senate is more efficient.
“When we had 70 (senators), there was so much discussion on every topic that sometimes topics of importance would have to wait months and months to get on the agenda,” he said.
Reach Diana Samuels at [email protected].
