Undergraduate Senate to vote on constitutional changes

Undergraduate Senate to vote on constitutional changes

By Amanda Riddle
Arizona Daily Wildcat
October 16, 1996

Arizona Daily Wildcat
"We were elected under this constitution, so it is hard to change it."
-Gilbert Davidson
Undergraduate Senate Chairman

The Undergraduate Senate plans to take students opinions into consideration before voting on a proposed amendment to the Associated Students Constitution tonight
The Senate is meeting at 5:30 p.m. in the Memorial Student Union Santa Rita Room.
The proposed amendment is the result of the recent official separation between the Graduate and Professional Student Council and ASUA.
Chairman Gilbert Davidson said the Senate will be voting on excluding all GPSC references from the Constitution, and will remove GPSC's voting rights on the Central Coordinating Council.
This requires revising the structure of the CCC, which votes weekly on appropriations board decisions regarding the amount of money given to clubs and organizations.
Currently, the CCC is composed of three voting members from each of the two legislative branches - Undergraduate Senate and GPSC; and three executive members - the president, vice president for clubs and organizations and vice president for programs and s ervices. The treasurer also serves on the council but has no voting power.
Under the current constitution, the student body president, who chairs the council, has voting power in the CCC but only in the case of a tie. One proposal is to give the president the right to vote in all cases and make the treasurer the chairperson, Dav idson said.
It is better to have the treasurer as the chair because the treasurer doesn't have voting power, he said.
Another option is to make the president the chairperson without voting power, regardless of a tie, he said.
Davidson said he would like to eliminate the whole structure in which the executive and legislative branches combine to vote on matters.
"We were elected under this constitution, so it is hard to change it," he said.
ASUA will be presenting a new constitution in late November or early December for students to vote on in the spring, Davidson said.
This version may create a governmental structure that is similar to the United States', in which the executive and legislative branches are separate, he added.