Student govt. members seek to reform UA

Student Activities Council Chairwoman Natalie Vernon and Undergraduate Assembly member Zac Byer, both College seniors, are organizing a meeting Wednesday night to discuss the possibility of reforming the UA. Vernon and Byer hope to change the manner in which the UA chairman and vice chairman for external affairs are elected.

Currently, both positions, along with the other members of the group’s executive board, are selected through an internal election process in the spring following the election of the next academic year’s body by the larger undergraduate population.

But Byer emphasized that “24 people voting in an internal election ... does not say representation. It’s asinine to think that the UA knows better than the student body who they want as their UA chair.” He and the others involved in the initiative would like to see the UA chairman elected popularly — in a manner similar to “the way that other schools’ equivalent of student-body president is elected.”

Vernon pointed out that a leader elected by the entire student body would help “break down the idea that Penn is decentralized and to start building a united Penn voice that we don’t have right now.”

“There are a lot of students behind this,” she said. “It’s not personal — it’s about what Penn is going to be like five or 10 years down the road.”

Byer added that, “Our decision to push forward with this constitutional change has not been shaped by the outcome of last year’s UA internal election. This is something that we have considered for over a year now and we are finally at the point where we want to actually enact constitutional change.”

Their goal is to gather as many representatives of “some of the larger groups on campus” as possible, he described, so as to discern how much support they have before taking more concrete action, such as circulating a petition. Details of the meeting have gone out on several group listservs.

The meeting will be held Oct. 21 at 9 p.m. in Huntsman Hall, although the room has yet to be determined. Those interested in participating can e-mail reform0910@gmail.com.

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