According to Grand Marshal Mike Dillon, who chairs the Governance Commission, the group will be voting this week, via e-mail, on a finalized document to propose to the Senate. The Commission will be proposing a revised Union Constitution with a substantial amount of changes including fixing typographical errors, changes in formatting to certain sections, substantive changes to existing articles, entirely new articles, and compiling the amendments appended to the current Constitution into the main body of the document.

In addition to the revised Constitution, the Commission’s proposal will also include a new amendment concerning separation of powers. The amendment would effectively prohibit any individual from simultaneously being a voting member of more than one of the following: the Senate, the Executive Board, the Judicial Board, and the Review Board.

When the proposals go in front of the Senate this Friday, the Senate can pass them, fail them, or modify them. The current Constitution states, “Any amendment of the Union Constitution must be passed by a 2/3 vote of the total Student Senate followed by a simple majority of the students voting in a valid constitutional election. A valid constitutional election shall be one in which 20 percent of those eligible vote.”

In order for the proposals to be voted on during GM Week elections, the Senate must pass them within the next week. The Constitution requires that they be submitted to the President of the Institute (or her chosen representative) at least one month prior to the vote, which would be held on April 7 if the Senate were to pass changes to the Constitution.

When the Senate discussed the working draft of the Governance Commission proposals at their meeting, there was a great deal of disagreement over several of the proposals. There was also a good deal of confusion over what each of the specific changes were that led to the revised Constitution. This prompted the Senate to pass a motion by unanimous consent requesting the Commission supply to the Senate a comprehensive list of the changes made to the Constitution’s main body.

Some of the more substantive changes to the main body of the document include eliminating the notion that the Constitutions of the Interfraternity and Panhellenic Councils need the approval of the Student Senate, adding an article to the Constitution concerning the Governance Commission, and making a variety of changes to the campus Judicial system.

Since the GM is also the chair of the Commission, Senate Vice Chair Max Yates chaired the discussion of the proposed Constitutional revisions. Senator Bob Fishel ’07 said he felt the changes made by the Commission during the fall semester seemed to be thought over more and much less contentious than the around 20 proposals considered over the last five weeks and voted on by members of the Commission by e-mail.

Senator Michael Goldenberg ’06 echoed a similar sentiment: “I do believe it was rushed through,” he said, referring in particular to the last round of proposals, which included many of the most substantive changes. He did point out that this was probably due to time constraints.

The Chair of the Judicial Board, Matthew Ezovski ’06, said that he did not think the proposals as brought to the Senate on Sunday should have been final. He explained that this was because he had not been given the opportunity to give his rationale to the Governance Commission as a whole for the way he voted on the proposals. In several cases, the J-Board was the only “No vote” on the proposed changes.

The general method used by the Governance Commission, when considering a change, was to reject any proposal that attracted two nay votes. The bodies represented were the Independent Council, the IFC, Panhel, the J-Board, the E-Board, the Undergraduate Council, the Graduate Council, and the Senate, and each had one vote. Abstentions and a lack of a vote did not count as negative votes.

While straw polls were taken on a number of the proposals, there was not time to discuss several of the others, due in good part to the amount of time the Senate spent on debate. A couple of motions were also passed asking the Governance Commission to reconsider and modify some of the proposed changes. At the end of the four-hour meeting, the Grand Marshal told the Senate, “This really was a wasted meeting at this point.”

If the proposed revisions to the Constitution or the amendment are approved by the Senate within the next week, the proposals would be put to a vote of all activity fee-paying members of the Union during GM Week elections. At least two weeks prior to that election, the full texts of both the current and revised Constitutions would be published in The Polytechnic.