A CU Student Government Legislative Council meeting. (James Bradbury/CU Independent file)
Student voters will see a constitutional amendment question when voting in this spring’s University of Colorado Student Government (CUSG) election. The current version of the CUSG constitution has not been amended since April 2018. Spring 2020’s amendment question regards several changes. Voting is open for students on BuffPortal until 8 p.m. Thursday.
A minimum of 10% of the student body, or 3,597 students, must vote in the election with two-thirds of the vote being in the amendment’s favor for it to pass.
“In order to be most accessible and applicable to the student body, the CUSG constitution is in need of revision,” reads the bill, authored and sponsored by CUSG Graduate School Senator Jake Carias.
The first major change seeks to transition the Volunteer Resource Center and Center for Student Involvement from advisory boards to joint boards while updating language in CUSG’s constitution. A joint board is a governing board while an advisory board purely counsels student government on bills and decisions.
The second change seeks to establish an advisory board for the Off-Campus Housing and Neighborhood Relations office that would allow for students to have a voice in this department. The office typically deals with student-community relations and facilitates registration of off-campus parties.
Other changes proposed by the amendment deal with articles in CUSG’s constitution.
Changes to Article II, which concern the executive branch, deal with specifying dates for the tri-executives to commence their roles after being elected. Tri-executives will specifically begin their role the day after the scheduled commencement class, which is decided by CU Boulder annually.
Article III’s changes deal with voting within the legislative branch. A clause explaining how representatives and senators will only have one vote at the legislative council under any circumstance would be added if the vote passes.
A second change to article III disallows legislative meeting during July when there is an annual recess. However, if anyone in the legislative branch does work during that time they will be paid.
Article VI deals with elections. An amendment is to be clarified so that elections will occur in the fall and spring but not in a specified month. It also seeks to allow the election commissioner to be nominated by tri-executives with a confirmed by a two-thirds majority vote in the Legislative Council.
The rest of the changes to the constitution are basic rewordings that do not change the meanings of clauses.
Contact CU Independent Senior News Editor Tory Lysik at tory.lysik@colorado.edu.
