Tag: Constitutional Review Committee

Union Restructuring: Why Did It Fail?

Of the changes proposed by the Constitutional Review Committee, none received more discussion than the Union government restructuring — the elimination of the Senate and the creation of a smaller Assembly and a Club Support Board.  It was endorsed as a great way to improve Union government efficiency by a wide range of campus sources, from the Justice editorial board to President Andy Hogan to our own writers.  Despite this, it was one of only three (out of 13) proposals that didn’t get the 2/3 majority of the student vote needed to be added to the Constitution.  So why did it fail, and what can we learn from it to fix the problems in the Union government?

I’ll start by saying that I really didn’t like the restructuring proposal.  I’m not sure that it would have actually solved the problems it tried to address, and there were several consequences of its changes that made me pretty uncomfortable.  It would have taken fewer students to make consequential decisions like de-chartering clubs, it would have raised the electoral barriers of participation higher, and it would have set up some explicit conflicts of interest for Club Support members.

But I doubt that even the small percentage of students who took the time to vote actually looked into the amendment very deeply.  Many of them probably saw the amendment for the first time when they voted, and their priorities were probably on amendments they saw as more directly impacting their lives on campus (SSIS, SEA, etc.).  Still, they chose to support most of the other proposals, even one which only changed a single word.

I think the problem with the restructuring proposal was much more simple: there was no immediately obvious benefit to the changes it offered.  So they wanted to make the Senate smaller and move the club chartering process to another body — why?  There’s a perception that students hate the Union because of its overly formal procedures, but I don’t think that’s true.  After all, how many students have to deal with the Senate on a regular, extended basis?  I think the real concern is what the Union actually does and the apparent disconnect between the Union government and the students, and there’s no reason to think that shrinking or dividing the governing bodies would have made a concrete change.

Thus, to most people, the government restructuring came down to a simple rearrangement of the deck chairs.  When you take out the votes of the CRC, the E-Board, and the Senate (who all actively worked to put the amendment on the ballot), you’re basically left with a coin flip from the voters.  There are definite problems with the way the Union works, but solving them requires a more direct approach than the CRC took toward the review process.

Priorities

The front page of this week’s Justice has, as its lead article, a story about the Constitutional Review Committee’s final report.  The article is well-written, comprehensive, and informative, and it’s accompanied by a nice, eye-catching picture.  The problem is that I don’t think anyone cares.

The CRC is one of those topics that’s only interesting to the very small minority of students who follow the Union closely.  Its meetings were held behind closed doors, its mission is basically just a reshuffling of the Union government, and even the best changes it proposes will measurably affect only a small percentage of the campus community.  You don’t have to take my word for it; in same issue’s ‘Brandeis Talks Back’ section, all four of the students they interview express complete apathy to the process.  Yes, the report is significant enough to merit coverage, but does it really deserve its front page status?

Meanwhile, you’d have to turn to page 5 of the paper to learn that a potential hate crime occurred on the Brandeis campus this weekend.  The newly-refurbished Muslim Student Association suite was viciously vandalized on Friday.  The wall in Imam Talal Eid’s office was permanently damaged, and his personal copy of the Quran was stolen.  The nature of the theft makes it hard to view this as anything but an attack against campus Muslims, and it absolutely sickens me to think that such a vile invasion could happen at the school I call home.  But apparently, it’s worth only one-sixth of a page buried in the News section, next to a full page of advertisements.

During Diana Aronin’s impeachment and trial, many people complained about the petty disagreements that the Union officers turned into a public spectacle.  I agree with them, but the campus media need to be held culpable as well for turning what should have been an internal Union affair into a weekly front-page spectacle.  If our Union government suffers from self-importance, it is only because they’re used to getting undue attention for every minor issue.  Meanwhile, the papers will continue to alienate their readers if they glorify topics that are ultimately irrelevant for most students.  I suspect that students are far more interested in uncovering hate on our campus than on how big the Union Senate will be next year, and I think the every campus media outlet needs to reassess what its reporting priorities should be.