Tempers flared during the Downtown student government Senate meeting Friday while representatives discussed potential alterations to the new election code.
The tension stemmed from members not knowing if they could constitutionally edit the code or whether the new universal constitution bound them to the document in its current form.
Representatives said afterwards that much of the squabbling that dominated the end of the meeting was primarily an outpouring of frustration, which had been building up since universal constitution discussions began last semester.
“A lot of people are emotionally invested in (the universal constitution),” Senate Leader Zack Lindsay said. “I’d like to put personal vendettas aside and work for the good of USGD.”
The alterations did not pass, with four senators voting for the changes, two voting against and four abstaining.
Lindsay, who voted no, and Universal Committee Co-chairwoman Jessica Boehm, who abstained, said they were supportive of the revisions in and of themselves, but were uncertain of the legality of those changes.
“I didn’t feel comfortable voting for something I wasn’t 100 percent sure of,” Lindsay said.
Director of Administration Rudy Rivas, who also leads the Election Committee, was given the code to review and worked through the entire document line-by-line with the rest of the committee on January 13. Coming into Friday’s Senate meeting he did not foresee any of the fighting that came to dominate it.
“I walked into the meeting not thinking we would have a problem,” Rivas said. “It came as a shock to me when everyone started bickering with each other.”
As the meeting approached 5 p.m. – the time the meeting is required to adjourn – some senators and executive board members began going after each other personally.
Lindsay said the fighting on Friday exposed fissures that have existed within the student government since universal constitution discussions began last semester.
The two main factions, Lindsay said, consist of USGD members who want to push for the constitution and members who would rather wait to see what the other campuses want to do before acting.
“I put through a constitution that I thought my peers wanted, and now it turns out they didn’t,” Boehm said. “I wish that I would have known about this beforehand.”
Some of the harshest words were spoken after the Senate voted to suspend Robert’s Rules of Order for nine minutes so they could have a more open discussion without being restricted by procedure.
Rivas defended making alterations to the document to President Joseph Grossman and Boehm. Both Grossman and Boehm didn’t think USGD could legally edit a document that was intended to apply for every campus.
Rivas argued that most of the proposed changes were to fix wording issues that made the document difficult to understand.
Rivas was also particularly frustrated about how little say he had in the election code, even though he heads the Downtown Election Committee.
“There is language in there that does not make sense,” Rivas said during the meeting. “I’ve said it before, I did not have a word in this election code, and it’s not going to make sense for the Downtown students.”
One adjustment Rivas pointed to as an important change was amending when voting would take place. The election code currently states voting will take place on the first Wednesday and Thursday in April with the intention of having each campus vote at the same time.
However, voting across all campuses this year is set for the second Tuesday and Wednesday of April. To fix this discrepancy, the election committee proposed to change the document to reflect the current scheduling but, with none of the propositions passing, the inconsistency was not corrected.
“This does not make sense for the Downtown campus,” Rivas said to Boehm during the meeting. “You can talk about the universal constitution all you want and everything like that, but this does not make sense on this campus.”
Immediately following the meeting, Rivas walked over to Boehm, gave her a hug and apologized for upsetting her. Bickering continued though in small groups as members quickly dispersed.
“There will continue to be people butting heads,” Lindsay said. “You can’t have everyone singing ‘Kumbaya’ all the time.”
Contact the reporter at connor.radnovich@asu.edu
