On Tuesday and Wednesday, ASU students will vote on a new universal constitution and election code, in addition to choosing their student government representatives for next year.
If passed, the documents will become the first to unify the campuses in ASU student government history.
The vote will be a little déjà vu for Downtown students, who ratified a similar pair of documents during a referendum at the end of last semester.
This week’s vote comes after slight edits to the original document.
A pan-campus committee, including two students from each campus and one from the Graduate and Professional Student Association, worked on editing the documents since January.
The new document’s ratification on each campus would essentially make the universal constitution Downtown students voted on last semester truly universal.
There are only a few differences between this document and the one the Downtown student government currently uses, Freshman Sen. and co-chair of the universal committee Stephanie Avalos said.
The major change to the constitution is the format and organization of the document, not the content.
The new model is in an attempt to make the complex document easier to understand, Avalos said. She said the committee had problems editing it because the document was so difficult to get through.
James Baumer, vice president of policy for USG Tempe, was primarily responsible for re-organizing the document, Avalos said.
“It made it a whole lot easier, not just to talk about, but to read through,” she said.
The most drastic content change to the constitution was the stipulation that minutes would be taken at Presidents Council meetings, Avalos said.
The Presidents Council consists of the campus and GPSA presidents. It deals with concerns and problems that span ASU.
Last summer, the council was responsible for hammering out the original election code and universal constitution.
Avalos said meeting minutes were taken during most meetings this year and this stipulation is to ensure future councils continue this.
Another change in the new constitution reduces the number of required credits — from seven to six — a student must take on the campus he or she is representing.
This was to make it easier for students to run, because most students have classes worth three credit hours, making seven hard to reach, Avalos said.
The pan-campus committee also fixed confusing wording throughout the constitution, which has plagued the Downtown student government since the campus’ constitution was first written.
Most of the content changes to the universal election code were reverting the code to what it was when students passed it in December.
Since USGD was the only campus government operating out of the universal code, the Downtown election committee tailored the document slightly to fit with the campus’ needs. The changes they made included reducing the amount of money each candidate could spend and changing the term “Supreme Court” to “judicial board” since there isn’t a Supreme Court yet established at ASU.
The pan-campus committee changed these back to the document’s original verbage, as well as restructured the election-code violations and penalties.
“We just saw this as a way to make the playing field more level and fair,” Avalos said.
The committee also looked for awkward wording, but Avalos said there might still be typos.
Per the current constitution’s guidelines, the new constitution wouldn’t go into effect until the day after spring commencement.
Contact the reporter at connor.radnovich@asu.edu
