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BY ROSARIO PAZ

In print | Published December 7, 2006

During last Wednesday’s Student Council meeting, some heated discussion emerged over the decision to change the roles of two co-presidents into president and vice president positions. The meeting resulted in a compromise vote that settled on postponing a special election for the role of vice president until the spring semester.

The change is an attempt to alleviate gridlock when making decisions and to clarify the role of each position relative to the ability to focus the council’s policies.

Some of the controversy derived from “whether the agenda should be set by the one whose platform was more recently voted on by the student body or whether it should be by the one who has already been in office one semester,” Joella Fink ’07, Student Council co-president, said. “Both co-presidents agree that this is a valuable and important change and a good direction for council.”

Comments by the student body about the lack of effective function in Student Council have also been important incentives to push for this change. “People would often say that the council wasn’t accomplishing anything, but sometimes that would be because the two co-presidents would effectively be in a stalemate,” Fink said. “Hopefully, with one person given this responsibility, they would be accountable for council’s focus.”

Some members of Student Council and the student body seem to believe that this new amendment will be positive for moving forward with the policy-making process and turning over students’ perspectives on the activity of Student Council to a more optimistic side.

“I think it might be a good idea to create the vice president position so that it is possible for a wider variety of opinions to be heard,” Joslyn Young ’10 said. “It seems like it would help them to be more effective.”

“I hadn’t really heard about this before, but I think it is a good idea,” Roseanna Sommers ‘10 said. "From my experience in high school, having co-presidents was a waste of time. I was one. We either disagreed or if we agreed, one person would do all the work. It wasn’t a true collaborative effort."

Nevertheless, there is a minority in Student Council that does not necessarily disagree with the change but does not respect the manner in which the amendment is being implemented.

“I don’t think [changing the role of two co-presidents to president and vice president] is a strong enough idea to (a) violate the constitution, which we debated but ended up not doing, rightfully so, and (b) it’s not urgent enough to create the hassle of running an additional election and shorten the term of the incoming electee by several weeks,” Ilya Faibushevich ’07 said. “We are just moving this election out of convenience because this amendment was not proposed in time.”

The decision to delay the election of the new role of vice president is a result of apprehension about how the suddenness of this implementation would negatively affect the incoming member.

“Because the position of co-presidents was up for debate and being evaluated for reform, we decided it was unethical to have someone run for a position that would be, by the end of the semester, dramatically altered,” Fink said. “We didn’t want to give someone a position that they weren’t expecting. The real controversy was how this would affect elections.”

Ultimately, Student Council compromised on a special election for the role of incoming vice president for next semester, after they have had enough time to establish the responsibilities and functions of this new role. “We decided to postpone elections for that specific position until next semester. So we’ll be holding a special election in the beginning of next semester,” Fink said.

Despite the hierarchical implications of this change, Student Council has no reason to believe that the new role of vice president will become subservient. With the change of the role of secretary, the vice president should still maintain an important amount of influence over Student Council. This position, rather than the secretary, will have the responsibility for assuring that the laws of their constitution are being observed.

“We wanted to make sure that the vice president position would still be worthwhile and important,” Fink said. The decision was that this responsibility was “better given to someone … who would potentially use the constitution as a necessary check against the president.”

In addition, though the role of vice president is still not fully configured, one of the greatest responsibilities of the role would be to serve as an overseer of the rest of the members of Student Council.

Students with opinions on this and other matters can attend the weekly Student Council meetings on Wednesday nights in Science Center 102.

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