You have some important choices to make on the Student Association ballot this week. Among them is voting on a new SA Constitution.

The Student Association is here to work for you, and in writing a new Constitution, we had one goal in mind: making a Student Association that works better.

On the ballot, you will vote for a Presidential candidate that has a platform you think is the best course of action for our campus. Under the new Constitution, the President you elect and the platform you choose will become the policy goals of the Association as a whole.

The president will appoint a cabinet and start initiatives based on their policy goals, and will have the power to have the Assembly “reconsider” – vote again – on any action that goes against their policy goals. This will hold the entire organization accountable to the ideals and goals that you elected us to pursue.

The new Constitution also gives the Assembly its own leadership, a Speaker of the Assembly. The Speaker will preside over Assembly meetings, set the agenda, and act as a figure to guide and lead the assembly as a whole. This allows the Assembly, your elected representatives, to act more independently and work more effectively at doing the jobs you have asked them to do. It also removes many procedural concerns from the president’s plate, allowing them to focus on leading the organization.

The Student Association presently runs on calendar years – our session begins in January and ends in December. The new Constitution aligns our calendar to the academic year as much of the rest of the university runs on. This is designed to bring our year to an end as the school year comes to an end, rather than having a three-month break in the middle of our session. It also allows us to use the summer as a much longer time to come together and plan out our next year.

These changes are all designed to make a Student Association that holds your best interests at heart. It is up to you to decide if they are the right changes to make. I encourage you to vote on Myslice from today until the 14th and tell us what you think. You can view the proposed Constitution on our website, sa.syr.edu.

Ben Jones
Parliamentarian
Student Association

Published on November 11, 2013 at 1:32 am