UA Chair Winston may restart constitutional convention

Undergraduate Assembly Chairperson Mitch Winston may initiate another constitutional convention this year, jump-starting last year's stalled effort to alter the 18-year-old document. Winston said this week he plans to bring leaders of all the branches of student government together to decide whether or not to change student government. The College junior said he will present the leaders with the final proposal from last year's convention, which UA members voted to reject at the last minute. "Our choices are to vote on the drafted constitution, scrap it and start all over again, or leave the constitution as it is," Winston said. The constitutional convention was the focus of last year's UA executive board, which wanted to restructure student government to bring its five major branches -- the UA, the Nominations and Elections Committee, the Students Activities Council, the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education and the Social Planning and Events Committee -- together. By the end of last year's full schedule of meetings, the 35 original delegates had dwindled to about 20 regular attenders. Although UA executive board members tried to pass a final draft of the constitution, the version did not earn enough votes to make it onto a University-wide ballot. According to Winston, the current document is "both too broad and too narrow." He said the constitution's rules about meetings are explicit, but that it does not deal at all with certain aspects of student government, including the recently-formed SPEC. "The current constitution is really outdated," Winston said. NEC Chairperson Tanya Young said last night she thinks the work of last year's delegates is a good basis to start discussions this year. "I'm willing to spend the time if we decide to go through with it," Young said. "There are some aspects of the constitution that need to be changed." Young said she wants to see the branches of student government "working together to be more effective." But other student government leaders do not agree with Winston and said they do not want to start the convention over again. "I think that right now the current problem exists within the UA," SCUE Steering member Hallie Levin said. "The UA seems to be the most concerned with restructuring, probably because it is the most lackluster organization." Levin, who said she was not speaking for SCUE, said she thinks the UA's problems can be solved from within, by "attracting their membership more selectively and educating their membership more effectively." "I'm inclined to say that if the people who spent all that time at the convention last year had spent more time with their organizations, the student government would have been more effective than it was," Levin said.

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