A yes vote on Referendum 3 in the upcoming student body election will reform the community representative system so that they are ultimately voted on by the entire campus and are granted fiscal voting rights on the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate. It will also create the Director of Community Affairs (DCA) position, an executive level position on Senate that will be charged with addressing minority issues and bringing together different groups on campus.
In an April 26 op-ed, Christopher Snyder advocated the rejection of both this and a competing Referendum 4 in the name of addressing "real" issues on campus. Snyder's effort to frame this referendum in the context of a larger Senate-student body disconnect is fine, but should not distract from the present issue at hand: adequate and legitimate community representation on the TCU Senate.
Referendum 3 does indeed address real issues on campus, namely ensuring that both the student body and the individual community reps will have louder voices on the TCU Senate and across Tufts.
Snyder is concerned that a majority-white campus would choose which individual gets to represent the views of minority communities. It is true that the entire student body will get to vote on the individual community reps, but this should not be a cause of concern to anyone. Referendum 3 allows the space for groups seeking community representation on the TCU Senate the opportunity to identify their own core group of leaders whom they believe could adequately represent pertinent issues facing their communities. Upon identifying these leaders in a fashion that best facilitates the maximum voices heard within their own communities, these students are then able to contest in a general student body election to not only represent the needs and concerns of their communities, but also to create cohesion between their community and the larger Tufts student body. A general election process does not mean, then, that minority issues are determined by a majority population, but instead that the whole student body can have an opinion on the student they trust to gradually diminish insularity.
This voting procedure will actually legitimize not only a community rep's voice on Senate but also their right to a fiscal vote, as proposed in Referendum 3. If a community rep has been vetted by their community and voted on by the greater student body, they should have full fiscal and non-fiscal voting rights on Senate.
Referendum 3 will result in a more, not less, "substantive debate about minority issues," as Snyder said. Putting an individual community rep's vote to the entire student body will advance the conversation about minority issues to all areas of campus. This is exactly the type of dialogue and debate that needs to move beyond its circles in various community groups and enter into, and be received into, the larger campus exchange.
Any question of whether putting the community rep vote to the entire campus would result in simply a popularity campaign is irrelevant to the current debate in that the same question must be asked of any elected TCU Senator. Perhaps that question should be asked, but again, let us press forward with the issue at hand.
Referendum 3 will bring legitimacy to the entire community rep system. The student body's voice will be legitimized in electing the community reps. The community reps' voices will be legitimized through fiscal voting rights on the TCU Senate. The voices of the communities they represent will be legitimized by engagement with, and inclusion in, a larger campus dialogue.
Snyder is right that neither Referendum 3 nor 4 will resolve his reportedly greater pet issue of whether or not Senate cares about the student body. They do not intend to. They specifically address minority representation on the TCU Senate and across campus through the community rep system. However, looking forward to how Referendum 3 will give stronger voices to students in TCU Senate and across campus, it sure looks like a step in the right direction.
Maybe TCU Senate is responsive to the student body; maybe it is not. Let's have that discussion. But let us also have the discussion of minority issues on campus, their greater relevance to the entire student body and their representation on TCU Senate. Let's also have a campus-wide vote on senators and community reps that bring all these issues to the forefront. And let's vote yes on Referendum 3 to make it happen.
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Charles Skold is junior majoring in political science. Nadia Nibbs is a junior majoring in International Relations; she is a TCU senator and was a member of the Diversity Task Force.
