A group of nine students has been working since January on a series of proposals that could dramatically restructure Associated Student Government Senate. This week, the student body will have a chance to discuss the plans for change. ASG will host a public forum on the ideas in the Lake Room of Norris at 6 p.m. on Thursday.
“We really want as many people to weigh in” as possible, ASG President Claire Lew said. She said the forum invites students to “wipe the slate clean” and imagine rebuilding ASG “from the ground up.”
The plan calls for reducing the number of ASG senators from 49 to 20, and to alter representation rules. Rather than represent specific student groups and dorms, the 20 senators would serve as delegates from the student body as a whole. Students would be able to cast multiple votes for any of the candidates.
Currently, the Senate represents students unevenly. “If a student lives off-campus, is involved in Greek life and is a member of Hillel, he may be represented three times by three different senators,” Parliamentarian Wilson Funkhouser wrote in an email. Group members said the proposed change would ensure equal representation.
The group included Lew, Speaker of the Senate Tyris Jones, ASG Public Relations VP Matt Bellassai, three ASG senators and two students unaffiliated with student government: Political Union Co-President Ben Armstrong and South Asian Student Alliance Co-President Sahil Mehta.
Although the group has gone public with the proposals, members remain divided over the specifics. “This was not a consensus recommendation,” Armstrong, a Weinberg senior, said. “Many senators — and Sahil and Claire and I — agree on the principles.” Armstrong, a former North by Northwestern writer, and Lew submitted letters to the editor of this publication voicing their support for the proposals.
Funkhouser, a Weinberg junior, did not explicitly endorse the proposals in an interview, saying that it may prove difficult to put the changes into practice. But he said he supports the thrust of the proposal, and that it may be the beginning of a multi-year transformation of ASG. “In no way do I think changing Senate will be enough,” he said.
According to the plan, the student body would vote during spring quarter on 15 of the 20 senators. There would be another election in the fall on the remaining five, which would allow freshmen to cast votes for respresentatives. While the plan does not prohibit freshmen from running for ASG, it would make winning office more difficult, as candidates would likely need votes from all four class levels.
But Armstrong didn’t rule out the possibility of a freshman winning a seat in the Senate. “If a freshman can run a campus-wide election and win,” he said, “hell yeah, that freshman should be in it.”
Lew said the group would craft legislation out of student feedback and present it to the Senate next week. It would come up for a vote the following week. Even if the Senate voted the legislation down, it could still become the law of the land if approved by a campus-wide referendum — a legislative move Northwestern has not seen in years.
Lew, Armstrong and Funkhouser all said that the proposals are meant to instill Senate with a sense of legitimacy, which they believe the body has lost.
“Legitimacy will stem from ASG doing more things that the student body needs,” Funkhouser said.