Concerns about structural changes in the Student Government Association’s new constitution – the subject of much debate in the student government – echoed within the senate and the VCU community during the fall semester.
In its early stages of approval by the Student Senate, many of the then 23 senators wanted to delay a decision until the SGA had a full 50-member Senate after the midterm Senate elections that occurred Oct. 5-7.
Saying “No document is perfect,” President Zmarak Khan and supporters of the constitution said the SGA was ready to move forward into the next stages of approval, starting with the approval of the students.
The Senate approved the constitution 16-0-6, allowing it to appear on the October midterm Senate election ballot. More than 1,000 students voted in the October elections, but not all students chose to vote on the constitution. The document was approved 450-43.
The SGA received final approval of the Constitution Revisions on Dec. 2.
Structural changes in the new constitution include: the appointment of the vice president to president of the senate, the extension of powers granted to the president, the switch from a steering committee to a joint branch committee and the creation of a judicial board.
Already transitioning to the new constitution, Senate Chairman Matthew Haynes, who was elected in the fall, and former Senate Assistant Speaker Daniel Plaugher, questioned the role of the SGA’s vice president within the new constitution.
Formerly, senators held the positions of a non-voting speaker and assistant speaker. Now, the speaker is the vice president and the senate has a chairman and assistant chairman holding voting-leadership positions.
“The largest concern that has been presented to me is that the executive branch could say who speaks,” Haynes said.
Plaugher agreed, saying, “My one concern is a conflict of interest by having the vice president preside over the senate.”
In response to the Monday, Nov. 29, article “Some senators wary of SGA leadership changes” that quoted senators Plaugher’s and Haynes’ concerns, SGA Vice President Edward O’Leary wrote a letter to the editor saying he was surprised at the senators’ comments.
“(The) placement of the vice president as the president of the senate mirrors the structure of the government of the United States,” he said in a Dec. 2 letter published in The Commonwealth Times.
“The student government’s new constitution was drafted with the Constitution of the United States in mind,” O’Leary said. “I hope that he (Plaugher) would be proud to have our student government modeled after such exceptional and proven institutions (the Virginia and U.S. governments).”
The SGA constitution was based on Virginia Tech’s and other universities’ student government constitutions, said Parliamentarian Ali Khan, who was a member of last year’s constitution draft committee. O’Leary was not a member of the constitution draft committee or this year’s constitution revision committee.
Attorney Robert Dybing, director of the firm Thompson and McMullan P.C. and a graduate law professor at VCU, also disagrees with O’Leary’s perception of what model the SGA used when writing its new constitution.
“No, they did not base it on the U.S. Constitution,” he said. “It doesn’t look like anything I see in the U.S. Constitution. They can say they did, (but) they could have just as easily said it was based on Julia Child’s cookbook.”
Dybing continued by saying he did not see the executive branch as having significant power over legislation by allowing the vice president to hold the position of senate speaker in the new constitution. The reverse might happen, he added, explaining that the president might want to keep an eye on the senate’s abilities to limit the executive’s powers.
“I’m confused procedurally (about) whether the bylaws are a part of the new constitution,” he said, “It’s confusing to me to see a structural document like a constitution with bylaws attached to it.”
The new constitution grants the president few powers, like the power to appoint justices. Most powers given to the president are listed in the bylaws, which require a two-thirds vote by the senate to be amended. These powers include: the power to serve as chief spokesperson for the student body, to recommend consideration of resolutions or bills that he or she judges necessary and expedient and the power to appoint a chief of staff to serve as executive assistant to the SGA president.
Sen. Ali Faruk, a member of the revision committee, said he wasn’t sure whether the bylaws were a part of the new constitution or a secondary document.
Dybing, however, said this inclusion could make all the difference.
“Can powers of the president be changed by a bylaw amendment rather than a constitutional amendment (which requires a student referendum as well as two-thirds of the senate’s approval)?” Dybing said. “To the extent that there are powers in the bylaws set forth, it would seem to me that they could easily change the president’s role.”
If the senate wanted to go after the president and wipe out most of his powers, Dybing said it could do so easily if the bylaws are a secondary document to the constitution.
Another change causing argument is the SGA’s switch from a Senate Steering Committee to a joint committee.
The old constitution places a committee, composed of three members of the executive branch and 11 senators in charge of steering the direction of senate meetings. Within the new constitution, the SGA Joint Committee was established to coordinate and communicate among the branches. It seats three executive members, two senators and two justices.
Faruk said the joint committee won’t have the same power to prioritize legislation as the steering committee.
“As far as I know, I don’t think the joint committee has anything to do with legislation,” Faruk said, “but the executive branch has more people on the joint committee than anyone else.”
The role of the joint committee is “yet to be seen,” said Tim Reed, director of University Student Commons and Activities and senior adviser to the Monroe Park Campus SGA.
“The perception that (the joint committee won’t be able to prioritize legislation) won’t happen now with the joint committee,” he said. “I don’t see that. When I read this constitution I think there’s just as many ways to block something from getting to the senate as there was before. In fact there might be more.”
The flaw in logic, Reed said, is that SGA members don’t think the committee will do that much.
“The assumption that this committee won’t end up doing much of the work to make sure everybody else is getting stuff done, I think, is fallacy,” he said.
Reed said it could be very likely that the executive branch, which has more members in the joint committee plan, could have a say in senate legislation.
The interpretation of these changes and the additions, Dybing said, rely on two things: who is going to interpret the constitution and how closely the SGA intends on following its constitution. Some organizations rely on precedent and tradition rather than constitution.
“I just don’t know how it’s going to work in practice,” Dybing said.
The SGA wanted to follow the guidelines of the constitution more closely than before.
“That’s our intention,” Faruk said.
To interpret these changes the SGA added a judicial board composed of four justices and one chief justice. A fifth justice will be appointed no later than next Monday. Among those approved Monday, Dec. 6 for appointment by the senate was Sen. Ali Faruk to head the judicial board.
“I really had a vision as the constitution was being revised that I could see where I wanted it to go and what role (it would play),” Faruk said, while questioned by the senate.
Another senator questioned Faruk’s statement.
“You said you were involved in writing the constitution, and you just said you had a vision for the constitution. Do you think that could affect your ability to remain unbiased, because if you already have preset notions on what the constitution means and what is implied,” he said. “can you honestly say that if anyone interprets it differently that you can come from outside? The rest of the candidates, they didn’t write it so they are looking at it…from the outside.”
Faruk responded by saying no one is unbiased, but he wouldn’t go out of his way to push for a decision that was obviously not meant by the constitution.
The reason the old constitution was redrafted was it had “some pretty obvious authority holes,” Faruk said.
Dybing disagrees.
“I don’t see any controls in the (new) constitution itself,” he said. “I don’t know what the old holes were. I don’t know why they redrafted the whole thing.”