The fate of three amendments to the Tufts Community Union's (TCU) constitution remains in limbo, and one student is waiting for the Committee on Student Life (CSL) to rule on whether the language of the revisions was valid before proceeding with his appeal against them.
Students voted for a referendum in April to adopt the amendments, but sophomore Christopher Snyder filed a complaint that month saying the Elections Commission (ECOM) had left students in the dark too long about what they were voting on. The CSL later pointed out that it had not approved the amendments' language before last spring's vote, so – regardless of the outcome of Snyder's appeal – the changes were not yet valid after the vote.
The CSL must decide whether the language is acceptable before Snyder can continue with his challenge to the process. But a vacant spot on the CSL has prevented the body from considering the amendments.
On April 23, voters approved the amendments, which would change the TCU Senate's process of electing community representatives and would add an official position to ECOM.
Snyder, who is also a copy editor for the Daily, submitted an appeal that day to the TCU Judiciary (TCUJ) saying that ECOM had violated its own bylaws by neglecting to sufficiently advertise the referendum before election day and by failing to prominently display an option to abstain from voting on the amendment.
The TCUJ shot down Snyder's challenge on April 25, calling ECOM's negligence a "harmless error" but ordering the commission to alter its practices in the future to address Snyder's concerns.
Snyder filed an appeal of the TCUJ's decision to the CSL on May 1. But it turns out that the terms of last semester's TCUJ members had already run out by the time they heard Snyder's challenge, so their decision was meaningless. Therefore, Snyder on Sept. 2 suspended his appeal to the CSL and re-filed the challenge with the 2008-09 TCUJ, whose term began at the start of the fall semester.
"The judiciary [members] who heard my case shouldn't have heard it. They didn't have the power to hear it, and therefore a new … hearing needs to be ordered," Snyder said.
The first priority right now is for the CSL to rule on the language of the amendments. If the committee approves it, then Snyder's appeal to the current TCUJ can proceed. Should the committee declare the language unacceptable, though, Snyder's appeal will become null and void because it will be dealing with an invalidated vote.
The first amendment proposed on the referendum suggests altering the way that student groups receive a community representative seat by moving the vote from the student body to the Senate. The second amendment would internalize how community representatives are re-approved, and the third would add another seat to ECOM.
When Snyder filed his May 1 appeal with the CSL, he told the Daily then that he disagreed with the Judiciary's belief that "the overwhelming vote in favor of the … referendum question" showed that, had the referendum been better advertised and the option to abstain displayed, the outcome of the vote would not have been affected.
On May 2, the CSL notified then recently elected TCU President Duncan Pickard, a junior, in an e-mail that it had yet to decide whether the proposed amendments' language was in line with university policy, and that it had decided to wait until the fall when it could conduct a public hearing on the proposals. The referendum cannot pass without the CSL's approval, which usually comes before referenda are put to a vote, but which Pickard said can happen at any step in the process.
"We unanimously decided to table the discussion and not make a decision at this time," Colin Orians, then the CSL's faculty chair, told Pickard in the e-mail. Orians added that the amendments "might violate [Tufts'] non-discrimination policy."
Currently, one student position in the CSL lies vacant after last week's elections. The vacancy led the CSL to delay its first meeting of the fall semester, stalling discussion of the April referendum.
This postponement also prevented the CSL from considering a separate referendum, which proposed adding the phrase "gender identity/expression" to two clauses in the TCU constitution that prohibit discrimination by recognized student organizations. Advocates had hoped to put this referendum on the ballot in the Sept. 10 elections for freshman TCU senators.
Current CSL Faculty Co-Chair Calvin Gidney, an associate professor of child development, told TCUJ Chair Veda Shastri in an e-mail yesterday that he would discuss the issue of the referendum later this week with his co-chair, Steven Hirsch, an associate professor of classics.
"[B]ecause the CSL depends [on] student elections … to fully constitute our committee, we have not yet convened our first meeting this academic year," Gidney said in the e-mail. He said he would alert Shastri to the committee's "thoughts on the matter" in the next few days.
Shastri said that the TCUJ is waiting to hear from the CSL before it schedules a hearing on Snyder's new appeal.
"If the CSL decides that they are not going to approve the referendum language, then the referendum becomes null and void, and Chris Snyder's appeal is also null and void," Shastri said.
Snyder said that he hopes the prolonged appeals process will lead ECOM to refine its bylaws.
"Currently, there are very few guidelines for what ECOM must do to promote [a referendum], and this needs to be fleshed out more," he said. "In the candidate elections, you have a lot of material that has been hammered out over the years because there have been disputes and because there have been issues … That is why candidate elections and presidential elections run so smoothly."
ECOM has recently mandated a three-day advertising period before referenda are put to vote in order to address the concerns Snyder raised, Shastri told the Daily last week. Snyder yesterday called that change insufficient.
