GSG officials hope to extend vote to approve new constitution

Hoping to improve on poor participation in a referendum begun last week, Graduate Student Government officials are proposing to extend the vote to approve a massive overhaul of the group's constitution.

Referendum ballots were collected during registration and also during a dance Friday, but neither of those events yielded the necessary number of yea votes to approve the new constitution.

According to Eric Adelizzi GS, a member of the constitution referendum committee, only between 20 and 25 percent of the graduate student body has voted. According to the current consitution, 33 percent must approve any new governing document.

The new constitution, which was proposed in April, was created to resolve what some see as bureaucratic flaws that have existed in the document since its creation, according to GSG constitution committee member Steven Miller, who drafted the proposed constitution.

The redrafted constitution more clearly defines how long the GSG chair can hold office, Miller said. It also grants the GSG the authority to suspend, censure or expel an officer.

In addition, the new constitution — which is almost twice as long as its predecessor — contains several other amendments that have spurred protest from several graduate student groups, including the Democratic Left.

The GSG's constitution committee took five months to create the new constitution, and allowed the GSG Assembly another month to discuss the document.

Feedback then was solicited from the graduate student body. According to the GSG Webpage, the only reply received from graduate students when presented with the new constitution was a request to be removed from the mailing list.

Democratic Left

May Mergenthaler, a member of the Democratic Left, said the poor response from graduate students shows that the GSG failed to provide enough information about the new constitution.

"There was no real effort to get every student involved in the process," she said.

Jason Brownlee, a GSG representative who resigned last week after leading a failed petition to have department representatives chosen through direct elections, also questioned both the content of the document and how the vote has been conducted.

"Much more fundamental than the outcome is the process itself, which has been thrust upon incoming grad students without any announcement and in conflict with the GSG's current constitution," he said.

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First-year graduate students — who were not included as recipients of a mass e-mail sent out earlier this month to inform graduate students about the proposed constitution — were asked to vote during registration when many were still unfamiliar with issues facing the GSG.

The current constitution requires that students be given one week's notice before a vote is held.

Mergenthaler said she and other members of the Democratic Left objected to one particular amendment of the new constitution relating to unionization.

The disputed article states that the GSG — which used to be called the Graduate Student Union — is not a workers' union, a statement that she and some members of the GSG felt was unnecessary.

Brownlee said in an e-mail the proposed constitution fails to address frequent complaints that the GSG does not adequately represent most graduate students. According to the current constitution, representatives are chosen by their department, and GSG officers are elected by the GSG assembly, not through an at-large vote.

And because of lack of interest in graduate student government, students typcially need only volunteer to be appointed representatives.

"Neither the old constitution nor the proposed new constitution have any form of institutions to guarantee department representatives are representing the students of their departments," he said.

But according to Miller, the new constitution is designed to make it possible for any graduate student to become an officer.