The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate has convened a special committee to draft the bylaws necessary for the implementation of the community representative overhaul specified in Referendum 3.
As senators debate the guidelines for putting Referendum 3 into action and explore specific bylaw changes to conform to general principles outlined in it, however, they are finding that there may be more holes to fill than previously thought.
Referendum 3, passed in a school-wide vote in September, grants community representatives the right to vote on fiscal matters, confers greater authority to the four culture centers on campus in choosing community representatives, and establishes the diversity and community affairs (DCA) officer position to manage diversity issues throughout campus.
Many details of the reform, according to TCU Parliamentarian Dan Pasternack, remain up in the air. While the specific language of the referendum cannot be negotiated, the bylaws, he said, would clarify some of the less defined points.
Pasternack, a senior, chairs the special committee tasked with drafting the bylaws. The bylaws, he said, will detail the community representatives' responsibilities, the process by which they are elected and the nature of the DCA position.
The referendum and its bylaws will function similarly to the Senate's own constitution and bylaws, according to TCU President Sam Wallis, a senior. While the Senate's constitution defines the roles of senators, its bylaws list their specific duties and responsibilities.
"The constitution is the framework that governs the structure of student government," Wallis said. "The bylaws are the specific procedures by which we go about executing the constitution."
The committee consists of Wallis; TCU Vice President Tomas Valdes, a senior; Pasternack; Referendum 3 sponsors and senators Nadia Nibbs, Chartise Clark and Carolina Ramirez, all seniors; all four community representatives; Culture, Ethnicity and Community Affairs (CECA) Committee Chair Tabias Wilson, a sophomore,;a member of the Senate Rules Committee; and one member from the TCU Judiciary, according to Pasternack.
Wallis said that the committee is limited in size to ease the process of crafting the draft.
"Whenever you're creating something new or writing something, I think its better to do it with a smaller group and then revise it later," Wallis said.
Pasternack plans to submit a draft of the bylaws to the Senate by the end of the calendar year. At that point, the Senate would seek feedback from the student body and the respective directors of the Group of Six, the group of culture-related centers at Tufts, before passing the final bylaws.
"After the bylaw is drafted, that's when the real work begins, because then we'll have some document that starts a conversation," Wallis said. "We can't have a conversation with nothing in our hands, with just hypothetical out of thin air."
The committee intends to finalize the bylaws in time for the Senate elections in April, he said.
Electing community representatives
One of the committee's major tasks is to specify the election process for community representatives.
Under Referendum 3, the four culture centers that have community representatives — the Africana Center, the Asian American Center, the Latino Center and the LGBT Center — select a few candidates during a primary review and these nominees are then subject to a school-wide election.
The referendum, however, does not detail how the centers' initial vetting process should be conducted. Though center directors will have to review the candidates, Pasternack said, what the review process actually looks like and who else is involved must be specified in the bylaws.
Clark said the intention of the initial review by the culture centers is to allow members of the community in question to vet the candidates before they enter the general school-wide election.
"I think that it would be really important for them to interact with students in whatever community they would be running for," Clark said. "The idea is that it will be people from the communities which they're trying to represent."
But determining which students are considered eligible to represent a certain culture center may prove challenging, according to Wilson.
"How do you define the Africana community? Do you have to be part of that community or do you have to be active in the center?" Wilson said. "For the LGBT Center, do you have to be gay? Can allies vote?"
Wilson believes the voting population in the initial review process should be limited to ensure that the community representative actually represented the community in question.
Without these restrictions, Wilson said, the community representatives would function as senators without sufficiently representing their respective centers.
The power of the center directors
The committee must also determine how big a role the directors should play in the process, relative to other student representatives within the centers.
Because the bylaws could outline new responsibilities for the center directors, Pasternack said, the committee intends to communicate with them and take their views into account.
"We want to make sure the center directors are okay with whatever we decide," Pasternack said. "We do want to make sure that they know what they have to do, that there's no expectations that we have that weren't communicated with the center directors and also no expectations that they have that weren't communicated."
In an e-mail to the Daily on behalf of all four directors of the culture centers with community representatives, LGBT Center Director Tom Bourdon said he planned to make himself available to community representatives but declined to elaborate further.
Both Ruben Stern, director of the Latino Center, and Katrina Moore, director of the Africana Center, offered no comment. Linell Yugawa, director of the Asian American Center, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Wilson said that he, Wallis and Pasternack would meet with the center directors some time soon to discuss the referendum and the bylaws.
Association of Latin American Students (ALAS) representative Eddy Santana, a sophomore, believes that the culture center directors should play a central role in the primary review process.
"They're really in the middle of things," Santana said. "To ignore that voice is counterintuitive."
Queer Straight Alliance (QSA) representative Alex Lis-Perlis, a sophomore, said that the bylaws should be flexible because each center operates in a different manner.
The committee must also decide whether the Elections Commission (ECOM) will oversee the primaries, according to Wilson.
Ill-defined responsibilities for community representatives, DCA
Referendum 3 outlines several responsibilities for the community representatives, including that they sit on CECA and that they meet with their respective center directors. Their position also allows them to sit on any Senate committee and vote on all matters, including fiscal ones.
When it comes to the specifics, however, these responsibilities become a bit blurry. The referendum does not indicate how often the representatives must meet with center directors. It requires that the representatives represent the views and interests of their communities but does not outline exactly how they should go about doing that.
Clark believes that the bylaws should require that the community representatives meet with the center directors and with leaders of groups within the centers at a specified frequency.
The committee must also itemize in the bylaws how the DCA is elected, whether the individual is considered a member of the Senate and whether the position is part of the Senate Executive Board, Pasternack said.
Referendum 3 requires the DCA to advise the Executive Board about issues pertaining to marginalized communities on campus, but it does not specify whether they should be a member of the body. The referendum similarly requires the individual to chair CECA but does not require that they actually be a senator.
Clark said the writers of Referendum 3 intended for the DCA to be a senator. She said the authors meant for the DCA to be vetted by the Senate but had not determined whether the DCA would be elected during in-house elections or whether the Senate would vet candidates for the DCA to be later elected by the whole school in regular elections.
