VSA constitution addendum, if passed, will allow students to vote on referenda

The Vassar Student Association's (VSA) Vice President for Operations Caitlin Ly '10 introduced an addendum to the VSA bylaws at the Feb. 8 Council meeting. The addendum outlines a procedure by which students can propose and vote on referenda to be implemented by the VSA Council.

The Council will vote on the referenda addendum on Feb. 22 and, if passed, the addendum will take effect two weeks later. In the interim, all students can review the addendum and propose changes.

The addendum will allow students to vote on referenda during fall and spring elections for student government. In order to be placed on a ballot, a referendum question must be approved by the Judicial Board and then endorsed by the signatures of 10 percent of the members of each class year. Alternatively, the referendum can be introduced to the VSA by a Council member, in which case a two-thirds majority vote by the Council will qualify the question to be put on the ballot.

For a referendum to pass, 50 percent of the student body must have participated in the vote, and 50 percent of participants must have voted in favor of the referendum. Therefore, if only the bare minima of these requirements are met, and 50 percent of the 2,450 current students cast a vote, a minimum of 613 students would needed to vote for a referendum in order for it to pass.

Once a referendum is passed the VSA Council must comply with it, unless the referendum is challenged by a student and found unconstitutional by the Judicial Board. Because they are binding only to the VSA Council, referendum questions are intended to be used to change issues in student government.

"There are certain decisions which do not come in the purview of the VSA," explained VSA President Jimmy Kelly '09. "Like saying the United States should not go to war with Iraq or saying that not only should we remove the VSA President, we're also going to remove [College President Catharine Bond Hill] from office, that's not in our purview."

Kelly explained that changes to the VSA Council, on the other hand, would be appropriate referendum issues. "A past issue in which a student referendum might have been useful was the issue of whether or not we wanted to have Coca-Cola products on campus," he said.

A number of specific issues with the addendum were debated during the VSA meeting. For example, the voter participation required to pass a referendum was originally 40 percent, but changed to 50 percent after an amendment and subsequent vote by the Council. It was also decided that the referendum items would come before the student government elections on the electronic ballot. This is because, although 60 percent of the student body logged on to vote during the latest round of VSA elections, only 40 percent of the student body made it to the end of the ballot.

Another issue addressed was the part the Judicial Board is slated to play in approving referendum questions. The language of the addendum says only that the judicial Board will "review [the questions'] wording and approve it as a valid question by a majority vote."

 "I think we need to be more specific about makes it valid and what makes it not valid," said Class of 2009 President Luis Hoyos. "I know that it's complicated because there is such a wide variety of issues that could come up, but we should at least give some parameters."

Hoyos first suggested that the Judicial Board be instructed to review the constitutionality of the question, but Ly saw potential problems with that solution.

"There are certain questions that aren't necessarily unconstitutional, but aren't necessarily appropriate to go on the ballot to the entire student body," she said. "The hope was that the [Judicial] Board would be able to talk to whichever student was bringing forth the question and give them suggestions on how to re-write the question."

Vice President for Student Life Nate Silver '10 suggested that the VSA define the criteria for a proposal in the constitution so that the Judicial Board would have clear guidelines with which to judge proposals. It is likely that a solution of this sort will be introduced and voted on at next week's Council meeting.

Another source of debate was the lack of campaign guidelines in the addendum. In VSA elections, candidates must follow campaign rules that dictate campaign specifics such as how much money they can spend and how big their flyers can be.

Cushing House President Mathew Leonard '11 explained that it would be odd to impose campaign rules on people who had been campaigning for the issue before the referendum. He offered an example: "[The Kick Coke movement] has been advertising for years...and we felt it was strange for them to suddenly be limited to campaign rules," he said.

Leonard also pointed out that it would be difficult to enforce campaign laws without a specific student or organization in charge of managing the campaign.

"Are we going to remove the question because one person out in the community violated one of those bylaws? We just thought it [would create] a really sticky situation to try to limit it," he said.

 However others felt that some students or groups might have an unfair monetary advantage if no campaign laws were enacted. No clear consensus on this issue was reached.

"I would highly encourage all of you to think about this very carefully and to submit an amendment this week, because we have to come to a consensus," said Ly.

Council members also discussed the ease with which a Council member could get a referendum on the ballot compared to the lengths that other students would need to go. Town Houses President Lorrette Fisher '09 explained that this measure would make it easier for all students to get referenda on the ballot by proposing them to a VSA representative.

"If we feel like we're not in a position to make that call based on our position, then they have to go back and get the 10 percent [of each class' signatures]," she explained.

The final issue discussed was the need to specify that only one question could be contained in each referendum.

"People could, in theory, tag basically 'pork' along and you put through multiple referendum issues on one ballot, all of which could be constitutional, one of which could be highly popular, the others not," said Leonard. Several Council members agreed that an amendment should be added to prevent this from happening.