The restructured committee will feature students representing issues, rather than campus groups

Ian Benson

Editor-in-Chief

A memorandum is in place that will change the current membership structure of Campus Council, moving away from group representation and focusing more on campus issues. The change was voted on by members at the end of last year, and will go into effect next year. Instead of having student groups hold a permanent seat, representatives will be elected at large through caucuses formed around particular issues.

Council is currently comprised of SGA, WAC, WVN, IGC, ISA, BSA and three at-large representatives. Under the new system, the structure will include four at-large representatives and the club seats will be replaced with students representing Service and Civic Engagement, Selective Organizations, Gender and Sexuality Diversity, Racial Diversity and International Diversity issues.

The change came about when members of Spectrum approached Campus Council asking for a seat, expressing a desire to represent LGBTQ+ students on the committee. Council voted to strongly consider giving Spectrum a seat, but wished to keep the current number of nine student seats and were hesitant to eliminate either an at-large seat or remove another group’s chair.

Further investigations led Council to learn a sizable portion of LGBTQ+ students feel that Spectrum doesn’t adequately represent them. A conversation spun from this, questioning whether students within a given community feel represented by the groups assigned Council seats. Council came to determine that while these may be some of the largest groups on campus, there are still some students feeling unrepresented by them. The response from these groups was to invite these students to come to their meetings and argue these issues, but Council felt this wasn’t the best way to address these concerns.

“One of the big discussions we had was how council can fluctuate according to which groups are active on campus,” said Council Chairman Eric Painting ’15. “It took a historical look at the groups currently representing issues on campus such as diversity, race relations, sexual orientation, civic and service engagement, etc. So what council wanted to do was come up with a system that could fix itself if one group were to fall out of active charter status.”

“The conversation has been ongoing,” said Council Member At-Large Matt Stouffer ’14. “Since I got on three years ago, we’ve been trying to figure out how we can improve the representation of groups. This is the one that stuck the most.”

The caucuses for each issue will be held by the Council Election Committee, and each will consist of two rounds of voting. The candidates with the top two votes in the first round will move on to the second, and the winner of that round will be the representative for that particular issue.

The representatives will then be required to regularly report back to their constituency and relay any concerns from them back to Council. This will take place in a monthly open town hall meeting.

Students have had mixed reactions to the new system.

“One of the main concerns is that it is not changing the existing system from more than what it is,” said Deja Moss ’14, president of BSA. “In making it open for the general public to be able to run for any chair, another concern is that anyone on campus who felt like those issues were something they were passionate about would be able to run, and so long as they had enough student body support, they could be elected.”

“For us, a student who hasn’t been part of those conversations, and who doesn’t know the history of this campus from interacting with our alums, we feel that wouldn’t be the best representation of students of color for our campus,” Moss said.

Members of ISA are also opposed to the new changes, and brought the memorandum to the attention of the Board of Trustees at a meeting earlier this month. They recommended that the Board, who are not usually required to weigh in on such matters, consider the issue.

“The troublesome part of this is it no longer says we need that black student perspective, or that international student perspective,” Moss said.

“It’s saying that those perspectives can come from anyone and that’s not true. If you have not lived that experience and understood other people’s experience from that cultural or diverse background, then I don’t think you should articulate it,” she continued. “An ally knows for any issue there is a moment when you stand beside and a moment when you stand back. But this is saying there’s no difference between an ally and a person who has lived that experience.”

Other students, though supportive of the new system, acknowledged that there are flaws. “There’s definitely negativity to it, which I understand, because at first when we started discussions about the whole thing I was also very adverse to the idea,” said Jordan McNickle ’14, vice president of SGA and their representative on Council. “I thought ‘I don’t want to lose my organization’s seat on council,’ but they are trying to give an opportunity for literally anyone who might care about the issue to have the opportunity to run.”

McNickle acknowledged that there are going to be some issues implementing the system the first time, but felt that it’s more open than the current structure. He also felt that because five of the seats are dedicated to concrete issues and require a caucus, they won’t simply be a popularity contest.

“This new system requires students at large to show up and vote for someone,” Stouffer said. “It will be the student body who elect students to council. Part of the system is hoping for the student body to elect someone who they feel will represent the issue well.”

Stouffer also felt the new process addressed the issue of group entitlement, which he felt was a bigger problem than any of the smaller issues.

If, for whatever reason, the system doesn’t quite work and someone is elected who is ill-suited for the job, the Chairman will have the ability to speak to the caucus and, if need be, remove the representative and hold a new election to replace them.

“Even if it is a little clunky the first time they implement this election process, under the old system, there is no room for change,” McNickle said. “You have a seat because your organization has a seat and that’s how it is. But under this new system, even if it isn’t perfectly run the first time, there’s nothing stopping someone who is passionate about the issue getting people he knows to support him and win a seat.”

McNickle hoped that this change to Council inspires people to participate more and that it gets the word out there so more people know about Council and what they do.

“If this gets repealed first meeting next year, then that’s good enough too because it means that people cared enough to change this,” McNickle said.

Council holds open meetings Thursdays at 11 a.m. in the Governance room.