March 29, 2011 - 8:06pm
CSJ approves adding constitutional amendment to ballot
BY ROBIN VEECK
Last night, the leading campus judicial body conditionally approved a petition to place a question on the upcoming Michigan Student Assembly election ballot that, if passed, would replace the MSA constitution.
However, the student status of 100 of the uniqnames of those petitioned still must be verified to officially place the question on the ballot.
If the question is passed by three-fifths of voters in the upcoming MSA elections, the current constitution will be replaced by a new constitution drafted by the Students for Progressive Governance.
Mike Rorro, chair of SP4G as well as vice president of MSA, and Phil Zeek, chair of the SP4G governance committee, appeared before a panel of three judges to support the petition.
Before certifying the petition, the Central Student Judiciary panel lead by Justice Carlos Torres examined the validity of both the petition and S4PG’s methods of collecting signatures.
S4PG collected over 1,400 student signatures in support of placing the constitutional amendment — which includes a total revamping of the document —on the ballot of MSA’s elections March 24 and 25. A student group needs 100 valid signatures to place any constitutional amendment, large or small, on the ballot.
Students who signed the petition were given a copy of the current MSA constitution, the S4PG’s proposed constitution and flow charts explaining both constitutional systems.
Zeek said the 60 or so members of SP4G who collected signatures made every effort to explain the proposed changes to the constitution, but admitted that students who signed the petition may not have thoroughly examined every document in the petition packet.
“Can I honestly tell you that every signature that I gathered was the result of a line by line, comma by comma reading? Of course not,” Zeek said. “But I made every effort to explain the changes.”
Rorro said SP4G collected the required signatures in only six days, between February 10th and February 16th.
“We went around campus, we went to a lot of different meetings. We had town hall meetings to try to get the word out there. We tabled in Mason Hall,” Rorro said. “We wanted to get a lot of students interested.”
Rorro said now that the proposed constitutional amendment will almost certainly appear on this month’s ballot, S4PG’s next step is to spread student awareness about it.
“We are just focused on distributing materials. We have 4,000 brochures coming out, and we are talking to people on the Diag, in the classrooms, and in mass meetings,” Rorro said. “We want people to know what’s going on. Hopefully, give people a fair view of what the changes are and of what’s moving forward.”
