As recent reports in The Dartmouth and elsewhere have made clear, I am a member of a growing movement within the student body which seeks to substantially overhaul our student government in order to better advocate student interests. This movement seeks to advance two goals within Student Assembly: The first is a substantial reformation of the structure of the Assembly, and the second is the censure and removal of Assembly President Tim Andreadis '07.
I am aware that campus discussion has unfortunately turned personal so to preempt those arguments I should note: Andreadis and I are friends, I encouraged him to run for Assembly president and I even campaigned on his behalf. Since then, however, things have gone horribly wrong. Serious change is now necessary.
A serious reform of Student Assembly is imperative because its current form promotes the illusion of student power and allows the Dartmouth administration to pretend that it is reactive to student opinion. A significant majority of students believe that the Assembly is irrelevant and few can name a single accomplishment made this year. At some peer universities student government is able to achieve real benefits for students by combining elements of our Student Assembly, Committee on Standards, Organization Adjudication Committee, Council on Student Organizations and other bodies of student power.
The impotence of the current Assembly was made clear with the outcome of the Committee on Standards task force, of which I was a member. After over six months of careful research and consultations with college and legal professionals, the task force presented a set of eight recommendations to address widespread student dissatisfaction with Dartmouth's disciplinary system. The Assembly endorsed the task force report by a lopsided 30-3 vote (despite Andreadis' vociferous objections).
This newspaper enthusiastically supported the recommendations and both the Dartmouth Free Press and the Dartmouth Review endorsed the majority of them. Despite the overwhelming student support, Dean of the College Dan Nelson chose to table discussion of the recommendations.
Even if the COS report had not been undermined by Andreadis, this episode makes it clear that the current formulation of the Assembly does not allow students to achieve any real change at Dartmouth.
The plan that we will put forth today in Student Assembly will call for the temporary suspension of the body and the election of an 11-student Reform Committee, which will be charged with working with students, administrators and campus organizations in order to write a constitution for a new Assembly.
Our resolution mandates that the committee will have a minimum of two weeks to complete this task. Only with the catalyst of suspension will students ever enjoy a government that endows them with actual power.
The plan will also call for censuring and possibly removing Andreadis. While I initially supported him, Andreadis has succeeded only in alienating much of campus and contributing to the fracturing of the student body into warring groups.
As the former Assembly Secretary David Nachman '09 explained in his resignation letter, Andreadis' actions within the body pit "Greeks against non-Greeks, men against women, minorities against majorities, and liberals against conservatives."
Andreadis' record consists of numerous distinct ethical lapses, failures of leadership and hypocrisy. Due to space constraints, I will only discuss those that have not been written about yet.
Andreadis lobbied against popular Assembly proposals, particularly the COS task force report discussed above. He has expressed an interest in abolishing the Greek system despite the fact that 60 percent of the student body are members and the vast majority of students support the institution. He turned in Adam Shpeen '07 to face disciplinary action for handing out a few beers to his committee members during their final meeting despite the fact that the Assembly sanctioned a pong tournament for its new members last term.
It is time for us to unite as a student body and vote to enact real change to our student government. Only by suspending and reformulating Student Assembly can the students hope to have a real voice to enact popular changes on this campus. Because of his serious ethical and leadership lapses as well as his outright hypocrisy, I call on Andreadis to resign for the benefit of the student body.
