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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Thursday, March 28, 2024

Committee proposes a new constitution for student government

A Senate-initiated committee has proposed changing the way students elect presidents so that more than two candidates could run, because many senators felt that the present system is too limiting.

The Constitutional Reform Committee, which was set up by the Tufts Community Union Senate and whose members include senators and other students, has suggested a system that would allow the Senate to nominate more than two candidates for the presidential elections. Under the proposed system, any senator who receives a two-thirds vote of confidence from the Senate would be able to run for the presidency.

"Many of us felt that it was unfair to restrict the presidential election to having two nominees when there may in fact be more than two viable candidates," freshman senator Rafi Goldberg said.

Because a large number of candidates would likely split the vote, the Constitutional Reform Committee suggested a system whereby students would rank the candidates to ensure that the winning candidate is preferred by a majority of students.

If no candidate receives a majority of first choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes will be eliminated, and the ballots of the people who marked the candidate as their first choice will be redistributed to count towards their second choice, Goldberg explained. Under the direction of the Elections Board, the process would be repeated until one candidate received a clear majority.

The new method of electing presidents has been included in a new draft of the TCU constitution, which the committee would like to put to students in a referendum. The constitution''s main backers are Sam Dangremond, chair of the Committee on Student Life, and Senators Chike Aguh and Alison Clarke.

The new constitution was presented to the Senate at its weekly meeting on Sunday and also included other suggestions to change student government.

The committee also proposed guidelines to clarify the procedure for filling vacant student government positions, following the confusion that followed TCU Senate President Melissa Carson''s resignation from her post in February.

The proposed constitution specifies that a new election will be held if the office becomes vacant during the fall semester. If the president left the post in the spring, the Senate could decide by majority vote whether to hold another election.

The new constitution, if approved, could avoid the use of ad hoc procedures like those employed earlier in the semester.

Another major change would be to replace the current position of Assistant Treasurer with an Associate and Assistant Treasurer to better distribute the treasury''s workload and expand the number of treasury office hours each week, according to Dangremond.

And in an unusual compromise, the Committee has proposed replacing the current Culture Representative system with the Community Representative system. The Committee''s proposed amendment would open the representative system to any TCU-recognized student organization that petitions using standard procedure, which entails a petition with 250 signatures followed by a referendum at the next regularly-scheduled presidential election, Goldberg said. The student body will vote every four years on whether to re-approve or remove a Community Representative seat.

Under the new system, the Asian Community at Tufts (ACT), the Association of Latin American Students (ALAS), the Pan-African Alliance (PAA) and the Tufts Transgendered, Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Collective (TTLGBC) will all be allowed to retain their representatives in Senate.

The proposal includes removing the Commuter Representative. According to Goldberg, feedback from commuting students indicated that they did not believe that the position, currently held by Josh Kersting, was necessary.

The senate will sponsor a forum on the proposed constitutional changes tonight at 7:30 p.m. in Hotung Caf?©.