Newly elected Student Body President Travis Green '08 laid plans for a new Student Assembly constitution and efforts to create institutional memory within the Assembly during his first meeting as president, which was attended by about 15 people.
Ian Tapu '08, the new student body vice president and the other half of the "iGreen" ticket, stayed quiet throughout most of the evening, allowing Green to take the lead in outlining the two's objectives.
At the meeting, Green established a timeline for the creation of a new Assembly constitution. In the coming week, members of the Assembly will construct a constitution which exactly follows the recommendations of the Student Governance Review Task Force report, released Tuesday. This new document will then be integrated with the Assembly's current constitution.
"We're going to assume we're integrating [all of the recommendations] and then work backwards," Green said, noting that changes outlined by the task force regarding committee structure would likely be implemented in the final constitution.
Green said he hopes the merged constitution will be ready to come in front of the Assembly for approval in two weeks. The document will require the approval of three fourths of the group's voting membership in order to be implemented.
The review task force, convened in the wake of this winter's controversy over student government efficacy, presented its final report to the Assembly on Tuesday. Green has previously stated that he agrees with most of the task force's recommendations, but feels that there are sections of the group's report which need further consideration.
On Thursday, Green confirmed his plans to create an extra chair for each Assembly committee, a change recommended by the task force in its report.
While the report calls for this second chair to be an Assembly outsider elected by the student body, Green said that for the coming school year this plan raises too many obstacles to be implemented.
Instead, the second chair will be chosen by Green and Tapu after a campus-wide application process.
"We would love applications from anyone and everyone," Green said.
The plan for one chair from within the Assembly and one from outside will also likely serve as more of a guideline in next year's Assembly, Green said. Rather than adhering strictly to this rule, Green said he and Tapu will select the most qualified students for the positions, regardless of their affiliation with the Assembly.
"We're trying to keep some institutional memory and get some new ideas," he said.
The two-chair plan as outlined by the task force will be fully implemented under the following year's administration.
In accordance with the Assembly's current constitution, elections for the Assembly's Membership and Internal Affairs Committee were held on Thursday night. This group, which is chaired by the student body vice president, is charged with appointing students to college committees and generally attending to Assembly attendance and function.
Four of the five candidates were elected after a vote among the 15 gathered students. Previous Student Body President candidate Jaromy Siporen '08 was among those elected, though he was not in attendance at the meeting.
Hoping to combat the problem of institutional memory during the switch between Assembly administrations, Green assigned students to pair with current Assembly committees at Thursday night's meeting. These students will work to ensure that projects and progress are not lost in the changeover.
"What happens to [Student Assembly] all the time is that people just forget," Green said. "People just forget projects, people just forget everything."
Other students were selected to begin work on various Assembly issues, including investigating the group's role in cosponsorship and regaining control of the Assembly website, a project currently managed by Sam Reisner '02.
