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New student initiatives submitted

Nine initiatives, three from SGA up for vote this Tuesday

by David Montgomery

Last spring, students submitted five initiatives, ranging in topic from laundry to marijuana, for a campus wide vote. None of the five initiatives received the necessary 50 percent turnout and failed by default.

For this semester’s fall initiatives, SGA is bringing back past methods of promotion, including tabling, posters and an all-campus mailing. With the Student Campaign For Increased Political Engagement (SCIPE), SGA will be putting on an open forum with initiative sponsors for students.

Members of the SGA Cabinet have also shown drafts of initiatives to administrators, including Vice President for Student Affairs Tom Crady, seeking input on how to make the initiatives more appealing to administrators.

“I was always incredibly disappointed in the past, because the initiatives always fell flat on their face after being passed,” said SGA President John Bohman ’06. “Part of the problem is … oftentimes [the] administration takes issue with the wording of the initiatives. Sometimes there might be a weird technical error or misleading word that makes them write it off.”

Student Service Coordinator Priya Malik ’06 revises initiatives before students vote on them, though final decisions are up to the students who submit them. Malik met with Crady and Dick Williams, Dining Services, to show them drafts of initiatives. “[Crady] had mentioned … that he was interested in looking at all the initiatives and looking at their wording,” she said. “He was pretty impressed with this year’s initiatives.”

Students are aware when they submit initiatives that there is an editing process, but were not told prior to the meeting with Crady that administrators were going to be involved.

Daniel Furuta ’08, who co-sponsored a resolution calling for better lighting on campus said the reviews were reasonable since it was adminstrators “who would be implementing the initiatives.”

Bohman said that initiatives complement and support the regular work of SGA. “Initiatives are a good way for us to check our own biases, making sure that we aren’t being misguided,” he said.

A successful initiative can also help SGA when talking to administrators, according to Bohman. “It puts more weight on [an issue] if it comes from both Joint Board and the student body,” he said.

The SCIPE event will be held on Monday, at a time that has not yet been determined. Initiative voting will open at midnight following the event.

Nine initiatives have been submitted. Eight of them were backed by the constitutionally-required minimum of 100 student signatures. One, calling for a darkroom, was added directly by SGA, which can place one such initiative on the ballot each semester.

Initiatives dealing with community-service funding, Dining Dollar redistribution, Grab & Go in the Campus Center, jukeboxes in dining halls, campus lighting and online registration will all be on Tuesday’s ballot. There will also be a 20 question survey from SGA run in conjunction with the election.

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