USG members sign new code of ethics

“It’s my job to ensure that every Senate member feels comfortable, validated and respected within the USG,” Diemand-Yauman said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian. “By collaboratively writing this ethics document, every USG member had the opportunity to contribute what he or she believed to be necessary for an efficient working environment.”

The code addresses professionalism and productive communication within Senate meetings as well as the appropriate discussion of ideas by Senate members with the ‘Prince’ and in the paper’s online forums.

Senate members pledged in the newly adopted ethics code not to comment anonymously on articles on dailyprincetonian.com, to “keep discussions open and inclusive, yet timely and relevant,” and to maintain professionalism by “avoiding personal attacks, striving to critique without criticizing, and substantiating our own opinions while respecting the opinions of others.”

The ethics code also states that Senate members will only communicate “relevant ideas” to the ‘Prince’ and will not criticize each other through the media, resolve internal issues or make personal attacks.

Diemand-Yauman also emphasized the importance of clear and unified communication with the student body in describing a revised role for USG communications director Peter Tzeng '10.

“We want to be as transparent as possible ... But once you let things out of the bottle, you can’t cap it back up again,” Diemand-Yauman said of his desire of USG officials to work through proposals with one another before presenting them to the public as official policy positions.

Diemand-Yauman explained that the aim of Tzeng's new role was not to restrict Senate members from talking to people but to ensure accuracy and complete transparency.

In light of the extended controversy surrounding the most recent USG elections, the code also mandates that elections be “positive in nature” and that Senate members only make positive endorsements. Additionally, it forbids Senate members from attempting to check election results before the Registrar verifies them.

An earlier draft of the code, as discussed at the USG meeting on March 1, included a clause mandating that the USG president “not, under any circumstances, endorse a candidate.” This statement was not included in the version of the document signed by the Senate members.

Diemand-Yauman explained that this clause was removed because some Senate members had “mixed feelings” about its content.

“Once we had a chance to discuss this particular clause, we decided to remove it so that the document could reflect everyone’s beliefs about the best way to run the USG,” he said.

Former USG president Josh Weinstein ’09, who endorsed Michael Weinberg ’11 for vice president in the USG elections last December, said he approved of the revision to the ethics code.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

“I think the USG made a wise move not to put any sort of restrictions on [its] president simply because he or she may know the most about the organization and was elected to represent the best interests of the student body,” he said.

U-Councilor Harry Schiff ’10 expressed a similar sentiment at the March 1 meeting. “The president does have a lot of influence over the student body, and there’s a very good reason for that. Voters don’t know what happens at these meetings,” he said. “Voters don’t know what the president does. I’m sure at the end of the year Connor’s going to know what the time commitment is, what kind of diplomacy you need, what kind of kind of qualities you need. Not only that, he knows which people among us are less divisive, who are willing to work harder.”

Diemand-Yauman, however, said he would not under any circumstances endorse a candidate. “You guys couldn’t pay me enough to endorse a candidate,” he told the Senate at its March 1 meeting.

The current USG president’s clear stance on the issue rendered the debate as well as the deletion of the clause largely inconsequential, some officers said, though a few of them added that they thought it was best for the president to refrain from issuing any endorsements.

“We saw last year that we can no longer trust the good aegis of actors to be on their best behavior,” U-Councilor Jacob Candelaria ’09 said. “We need to have the ethical wherewithal to craft an institutional constraint that puts into paper what we all have, up till now, believed to be the right thing to do, which is that the president remains silent when it comes to presidential endorsements.”

Candelaria added that he believed any benefit provided by the president sharing an informed opinion with voters would be “significantly overridden by the fact that the president foraying into political endorsements causes ... undue harm to our working relationships.”