On June 1, the Dartmouth Student Government Senate met for its ninth and final weekly meeting of the spring term. Led by student body president Chukwuka Odigbo ’25, the Senate discussed the incoming Jawad-Harvard administration’s plans to improve DSG bylaws over the summer.
Student body president-elect and general senator Sabik Jawad ’26 introduced a discussion on the potential implementation of Robert’s Rules of Order, an 816-page framework for parliamentary procedure used by student governments at peer institutions, such as Brown University and Harvard University.
Robert’s Rules standardize motion calling and quorum procedures, among others. Some amendments made to the DSG constitution this year, including a proposal by Jawad to allow votes by unanimous consent, were inspired by Robert’s Rules.
Robert’s Rules would facilitate discussion by cutting out administrative processes that currently take up time at meetings, according to student body vice president-elect Favion Harvard ’26.
Any changes to the bylaws over the summer would aim to facilitate “more open discussion in DSG’s meetings,” Harvard said.
Harvard co-sponsored a proposed constitutional task force to reform DSG bylaws earlier this year. The task force expired at the end of the winter term and shared no recommended reforms with the Senate, according to a statement from Odigbo.
General senator Ana Arzoumanidis ’28 said she believes that DSG should discuss administrative changes during the summer rather than the academic year, noting that DSG “wasted” meeting time this year on “minute” disagreements about the constitution and “didn’t get projects going until week five or six” of the fall term.
“[During] my first DSG meeting that I came to with a couple friends, a lot of [the content] was petty disagreements,” Arzoumanidis said. “I think that did repel people away from DSG meetings.”
Representative Mary Sherrard ’28 said she believes that it is also a “waste of a good meeting” when DSG members bring unfinished proposals to be voted on by the Senate.
“If you have something that you would like to propose, please come to the meeting with it written out in final form,” Sherrard said.
A previous draft of the June 1 meeting agenda included an amendment to get rid of the public roll call on Senate votes. Without a public roll call, votes cast in closed sessions would be anonymous to the student body. Certain types of voting, such as on the approval of representatives, are already conducted anonymously. The amendment was removed from the agenda before it was published to undergraduates.
Odigbo declined to disclose the identities of the DSG members who added and removed the amendment from the agenda to The Dartmouth.
DSG first began publishing public roll calls last spring, following a series of private closed session votes related to pro-Palestinian protests.
DSG Senate meetings occur weekly on Sundays at 7 p.m. in Collis 101 and are open to all students.
Jackson Hyde '28 is an intended philosophy major from Los Angeles, California. His interests include photography, meditation, and board game design.
