Source' culture rep up for vote today

Many students won't discover that Amendment 3, a proposal to create a Primary Source culture representative to the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate, is up for a vote until they are asked to cast an electronic ballot on it today.

The proposal was pushed forward quickly so that students could vote on it at the same time as the election for open Senate seats _ which has some members of the TCU government worried that uninformed students will vote arbitrarily on the question.

The implications of the referendum range far beyond the specific culture representative question, and the vote is likely to show the significant changes that online voting has had on the TCU system.

One issue is whether the ease of organizing online elections is allowing the vote on the referendum to take place before students have a chance to learn about the issues.

"I would question whether something [that] is coming up so quickly would be the real will of the student body since there isn't going to be that discussion on it," Senate Treasurer Benjamin Lee said. "Many freshmen do not even understand the entire culture rep controversy that has been going on in student government."

This is the first time in recent years that a constitutional referendum has been voted on during a mid-year election. A referendum must be voted on by 20 percent of the student body for it to be considered, and mid-year elections in the past have suffered from a lack of student interest and low voter turnout.

Referenda are usually reserved until the April presidential election _ when students are more likely to pay attention to TCU politics _ but in the past, even this has not guaranteed a high enough turnout. In the spring of 2000, an amendment to create a presidential cabinet failed because fewer than 20 percent of students voted.

Student participation, however, has increased dramatically since elections went online, thus eliminating the need to wait until the spring presidential election to vote on constitutional referenda.

"One thing in the future that the Senate is going to have to consider is changing the criteria for voting on referendum," Elections Board chairman Joe Coletti said. "With online voting, what we would consider is a bad turnout is enough for the referendum."

Though some senators feel that there are not enough issues requiring referenda in existence for online voting to spark a slew of proposals, they are concerned that the ease of having an online election will hamper the quality of dialogue on potential amendments.

While students are traditionally apathetic toward student government, they will pay attention to an issue if they are given time to think about it and discuss it, Lee said. When he led a constitutional referendum in the spring of 2001, he was able to get students to understand and take an interest in voting on the issue by starting the discussion ahead of time, making efforts to reach out to different campus groups, and using mass advertising techniques. Less than 30 percent of students voted in that election, but Lee feels those who did made informed decisions about the referendum question.

In the case of the conservative culture representative, the Elections Board was told only four days ago that the referendum had been approved to be voted on by the TCU Judiciary and Committee on Student Life (CSL) _ and thus much of ELBO's advertising of the election does not inform students that students will also be asked to vote about the amendment.

A public debate on the issue last night was also not advertised, either in a campus publication or on tuftslife.com.

The Source hasn't "done much [advertising] because we were unsure about its actually happening," Source Editor-in-Chief Megan Liotta said.

The Source originally approached the CSL on Oct. 25 to have the referendum approved, but the student-faculty committee needed time to research whether the proposal violated any laws or University policies before it could send it on the TCUJ. CSL approval was given Monday afternoon, and the TCUJ acted immediately to set the wording of the question so it could go on the ballot this week.

Lack of student knowledge about the constitutional referendum is more likely to decrease turnout than it is to cause informed students to cast opinions, senators say. Students will just delete the e-mail reminding them to vote if they don't know what the issue is, Lee said.

Some senators also worry that the details of the proposal for the Source culture representative were not fleshed out, which could potentially pose problems for the operation of the Senate. If the amendment passes, it would take effect at next Monday's Senate meeting. But the Senate has not yet determined how it would even go about electing a culture representative and what qualifications are necessary for the position.

"If it passes, you're going to have someone who has no plan or who doesn't know what they are doing," Senate Historian Alison Clarke said.

Senate Vice-President Andrew Potts said that a lack of pre-planning on the part of the Source should not have too great an effect on the functioning of the Senate.

The Source feels it has fleshed out many of the details in the last two weeks. Liotta said that the editorial staff would nominate a representative from the group, and that a few names are being considered.

The Source also has developed an agenda of issues it would like to press in the Senate, including reforming student government to make it more democratic.

"The rep would have an agenda mirroring other culture reps, including faculty retention, department funding, and seeing the classes and requirements we want," Liotta said. "We would like to see World Civ. Requirement include Western thought courses as well."

A conservative culture representative would be able to influence important issues. Last year, the vote on buffer funding for Radix passed only because of support from the culture representatives. The vote not to have Fall Fest this year passed by a small margin as well.

Regardless, senators say that they will accept the results, no matter whether the amendment is passed or not.

"It's the campus who tells us what the constitution will be, so you work with it," Potts said. "There were plenty of people on the Senate who were against culture reps having the vote, but they got the vote, so we worked with it."

Kathryn Mims contributed to this article.