YES on the constitution

We never imagined it would end up like this. When the three of us first became involved in the process of rewriting the Tufts Community Union Constitution a semester ago, we were all skeptical that real progress could be made. The issue of culture representatives had created bitter divisions among the Tufts community, with minority groups feeling threatened and others feeling disenfranchised. The system of culture representatives had existed in one form or another for over a decade, so how could one group of students hope to change it? Fortunately, change has been made -- and we encourage you to vote YES on the new TCU Constitution to enact this change.

The positive change written into the new TCU Constitution came about because something new and exciting happened over the course of this semester -- people started talking to each other. Students with widely different ideas and backgrounds all sat in the same room and talked face to face. From senators, to members of The Primary Source, to leaders of cultural organizations, students worked together to create a system of representation that would be fair and equitable to all. Meeting every week for months, these meetings produced the new "community representative" system.

The new community representative system was created as a compromise between very different ideas about democracy and government. While opinions about underlying principles may not change, we believe that in practice it is possible for minority students to have a specific voice in student government while preserving a fair and democratic system. The community representative system accomplishes this in four ways:

Community representatives are elected by either a single student organization or by a group of student organizations. Community reps may therefore represent a "culture" embodied by a single group of students, or a culture than spans multiple student organizations.

Any student organization may petition the student body for a community representative by collecting 250 signatures and passing a campus wide vote. Any group of students is, by definition, a "community" -- and so has equal standing to ask for a community rep.

Community reps may vote in the senate, but not on monetary matters. They may therefore have their voice heard, but do not exist to funnel money to their group. This allows community reps to avoid conflicts of interest while retaining a platform from which to articulate their views.

Community reps must be "re-approved" by a campus wide vote every four years. This allows the community rep system to adapt itself to changing times, instead of locking a group in or out of the system.

This new system may not be perfect, but it is a compromise that all students involved in the process were happy with. Different students on our campus have very different opinions, and until we all think alike no one group can be entirely satisfied.

However, the community representative system is not the only change to the TCU Constitution. The community rep system is the highlight, and the section that many might consider to be the most contentious, yet a variety of other changes were made. Most of these were either grammatical or dealt with the internal workings of student government, but two major changes would affect every student.

First, the new TCU Constitution allows more than two candidates to run for the office of TCU president -- opening the field to as many qualified candidates as desire the position. With this change comes a auxiliary change to how students vote for TCU president. Instead of a normal majority vote, students will instead rank their choices for TCU president according to their preference. The votes will then be counted according to each voter's ranking until one candidate has a majority. While this may seem confusing, the 2000 United States Presidential election provides a perfect analogy: citizens who desired to vote for Ralph Nader could rank him as their first choice, with Al Gore a second choice preferable to George W. Bush. When in the final tally Nader receives the least number of votes, those votes would then be transferred to the second choice on each ballot -- presumably electing Gore to the White House. This rank voting system allows elections to accurately reflect what students desire, without having to "game" the system.

Secondly, the treasury office of the senate has been reorganized so that it is made up of a treasurer, an associate treasurer, and an assistant treasurer. The amount of paperwork and bureaucracy the treasury office must supervise has grown to a staggering amount. By dividing the work among three people instead of the current two, the treasury office will more effectively administer the student activities fee. This change will make the treasury office more accessible to students seeking to manage group budgets.

In the end, this year's process of Constitutional reform was an engaging experience that benefited from the ideas of a wide range of people. While we three are the primary authors of the new Constitution, we must acknowledge and thank all the students who worked to make change a reality. This new Constitution presents real progress for student government at Tufts, so please vote YES.

Sam Dangremond is a senior majoring in chemical engineering, Alison Clarke is a senior majoring in psychology and Spanish, and Chike Aguh is a sophomore majoring in political science.