Voting has begun on the proposed new constitution from the Alumni Governance Task Force, as well as on the four amendments to the current constitution that were proposed by petition (requiring 1 percent of the alumni body to sign for each). The Executive Committee of the Association has issued a recommendation of how to vote to all alumni. Not surprisingly, their recommendation is for alumni to vote in favor of the AGTF proposal; interestingly enough, they have also recommended voting against all four petition amendments.
Why is this interesting? Because they claim to be advocating the AGTF proposal as a necessary set of reforms, and yet recommend against some of those self-same reforms when they are presented piecemeal. True, if the AGTF proposal passes, the petition amendments become moot, as the constitution they amend becomes null and void. However, if the proposal fails, the Executive Committee would prefer for us to keep the status quo than to adopt reforms which they claim to feel necessary. Consider: The fourth petition amendment (the fifth item on the ballot) places all-media voting for officers in the constitution, rather than in the meeting guidelines. The ECA has promised multiple times to modify these guidelines to allow all-media voting, but has so far failed to do so. And, even if they do modify the guidelines, a future ECA could modify them again to remove all-media voting, returning us to the current system. A constitutional amendment, by contrast, is much harder to strip out. The amendment also increases officers' terms of service to two years, providing the continuity which proponents of the AGTF proposal claim the "officer arc" provides. And yet the ECA recommends voting against this proposal because, "most officers ... agree to stand for reelection for at least one additional term," and because they've promised to have all-media voting in the future. What's wrong with encoding it in the constitution?
The ECA also recommends voting against the second petition amendment (the third item on the ballot), which allows alumni to use proxies for any votes which come up at the annual meetings, eliminating the need for them to return to Hanover. Currently, that primarily includes the election of officers, though other business may occur. If the fourth amendment is passed, it will be solely for all business other than elections which is deemed to require a vote (cf. the current first meeting guideline: "... members must be present in person to vote at any meeting of the Association or otherwise for any business of the Association.") Note that the amendment doesn't modify the article of the constitution providing all-media voting for trustee candidates, nor does it modify the article addressing the election of officers. And yet the ECA, in its recommendation to vote against the amendment, explicitly says, "... it is thus more restrictive than is currently provided for in voting on trustee candidates and for the annual meeting's election of the officers." This is patently dishonest of the ECA, but without this misdirection, the ECA's recommendation is clearly to vote against democracy.
The ECA, in its zeal to get the AGTF proposal ratified at all costs, has chosen to recommend against amendments to the current constitution which would clearly grant more democratic rights to all alumni, even while lauding the same changes in the AGTF proposal. This attitude is a true disservice, and should not be accepted from our elected leaders. I urge all alumni to look closely at the actual text of the AGTF proposal and the petition amendments, and decide for themselves which ones have merit. The ECA has shown that its judgment cannot be trusted.
