Members of the Associated Student Government executive board want to overhaul the organization’s structure, adding a vice president and two executive board positions.
Under the amended constitution, a new vice president would be ASG’s second in command, serve as the primary liaison to the administration and oversee most committees and boards. The current vice presidents would become “directors,” joined by a director of human resources and director of research and development, both new positions. The changes would require approval of two-thirds of the entire Senate. (Read the proposed “job descriptions” of each new position here, and proposed organizational charts for ASG here.)
Wednesday’s Senate meeting grew contentious, with some members accusing the executive board of overstepping its bounds after ASG President Neal Sales-Griffin offered the amendment to fix what he said are ASG’s inefficiencies.
The ASG constitution does not properly define the office of the president, Sales-Griffin said. The president could do more with narrower responsibilities and a greater level of support from the new offices, he argued.
“We started brainstorming about what ASG is and how it functioned, because we didn’t really know,” the SESP junior said. “Nobody can be held accountable to any of this stuff.”
The office of executive vice president tries to cover too broad a scope to be effective, said Executive Vice President Vikram Karandikar. The position currently includes working with the president on a regular basis as well as managing B- and T-status groups.
“Unofficially, the EVP was supposed to be the buddy-buddy of the president,” the McCormick sophomore said. “The reason I wanted to do this job was to deal with student groups, and the other responsibilities should be assigned to a different student.”
In a rare move, Rules Committee members made an immediate counterargument to the amendment on the grounds that the proposed changes would expand ASG’s executive board beyond its intended parameters and devalue the constitution.
“We see it as changing ASG from a student government to more of a business,” said Rules Committee member Grace Adamson, a Weinberg sophomore. “Our job is to efficiently serve student groups, not be its own body.”
Amending the constitution every time changes are needed will reduce the significance of a constitutional amendment, Adamson said.
“The constitution is a document that should be preserved,” she said. “The administration loses respect for ASG when it changes every few years.”
While the Rules Committee controls which amendments reach Senate, the committee allowed it to reach the floor despite its objections, which included questions about the amendment’s necessity.
Weinberg junior Harry Vijayaraghavan, who lost to Nate Perkins in April’s race for student services vice president, questioned the need for an amendment to add the positions Sales-Griffin requested.
“Jonathan Webber created numerous ad-hoc committees, so don’t you think that these positions can be created without making changes to the constitution?” asked Vijayaraghavan.
Senate has a week to consider the amendment before a vote next Wednesday, and will host a forum open to the public today in the Lake Room at 7 p.m.
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Read the proposed “job descriptions” of each new position here, and proposed organizational charts for ASG here.
