Student Assembly struck down two amendments proposed by Will Hix '12 during its meeting on Tuesday. The first amendment sought to change the voting process for the student body president and the student body vice president from approval voting to preferential voting. In the current voting model, students vote for any number of candidates running for a given position. Under the proposed model, votes would have been tabulated based on a ranking system and the votes for each candidate would be evaluated against every other candidate's ranking independent of others running, with the candidate who won every head-to-head comparison emerging as the winner. To pass, the amendment needed approval from five of the seven voting members present but received none. The second amendment proposed eliminating all eligibility requirements except on-campus residence for student body president and vice president positions, as well as prohibiting the Assembly from setting further eligibility requirements. The amendment needed approval votes from six of the nine voting members present in order to pass. Two members voted for the amendment, six voted against it and one abstained.
The amount of charitable donations given by the extremely wealthy has increased over the last year, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported. In 2011, the top fifty American donors gave $10.4 billion to charity, up from $3.3 billion in 2010. The largest donation came from the estate of the late agricultural heiress Margaret Cargill, who left $6 billion to foundations that support the arts, disaster relief, higher education and other causes. Other donations went to colleges, as 19 benefactors gave a total of $1.5 billion dollars to different colleges and universities, according to The Chronicle. The rise in charitable donations has come at a time when economic indicators, such as the stock market, have been showing signs of improvement. However, charitable donations have not returned to pre-recession levels, as the current median donation from the top 50 donors is $61 million, down from almost $75 million in 2007, according to The Chronicle.
