USGD is expected to vote at Friday’s Senate meeting on an organizational restructure that would drastically change the distribution of government committees.
Senate President Joey Amonett said talks of a restructure began last month. USGD worked over winter break to construct a new set of bylaws to specify organizational operations, including those of the Senate and executive officers. He said a few significant changes can be expected.
“The Senate restructuring is necessary to ensure that USGD representatives have something to work with once they are in office,” Amonett said. “Last year we only had one person in the entire organization who had been a part of the student government before and it was difficult for everyone to learn how everything is supposed to operate.”
The most significant change of policy deals with committees, Amonett said. All of USGD’s current committees will be dissolved, excluding the Budget Allocations Committee.
Three new committees are to be formed: University Affairs, Downtown Phoenix Campus Affairs and Government Operations. University Affairs will deal with all university-wide issues, while DPC affairs will deal with downtown-specific issues. Government Operations will focus on issues within USGD.
But current committees aren’t being dissolved completely, as the new Greek Life and Ethnic Advisory committees will now be considered “senate task forces,” Amonett said. Senators will be allowed to create these task forces that will operate within one of the four committees.
“For instance, because Greek Life initiatives exist on multiple campuses, it would operate under the University Affairs Committee,” Amonett said. “Task forces serve as a way for senators to personally lead specific initiatives that aren’t dealt with by all of USGD.”
Ethnic Advisory Committee Chair and Cronkite School Sen. Malcolm Brinkley said the task forces will help senators run events or other large projects by setting aside time to work on them.
Amonett said the task forces will be easy to create, needing only a two-thirds vote from the committee they are being formed under. The same vote is needed to dissolve the task force.
Also being implemented is a more formal process for passing legislation and an official process for electing the Senate president, a new position this year.
Senators will also be required to maintain more office hours. The current bylaws state that every senator must hold four office hours per month, but the new bylaws would increase the requirement to three hours per week. While committee and task force meetings count toward those hours, senators would need to spend at least one additional hour per week in the Senate office, which is open to Downtown students.
Vice President of Policy David Bakardjiev and other executive officers created new structures for their positions.
“I hope this will solidify the structure of USGD and allow future representatives to hit the ground running once they are in office,” Amonett said. “If processes and rules are listed out, it will be easier for new representatives to understand the operations of the USGD.”
The new bylaws also recognize the functions of the Sun Devil Coalition, new to ASU this year.
The current Senate bylaws are only a couple pages in length, while the document being proposed Friday is roughly 22 pages.
Contact the reporter at kevin.p.fallon@asu.edu
