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After last year’s contentious campaign for Student Association president, it is refreshing to see four candidates vying for the position with, for the most part, passion and grace. As the university transitions to a new dean of undergraduates, student leadership will be essential in the next year.
The internal vice president serves as a proxy for what we want the Student Association to be. They should champion others’ ideas and advocate fiercely to ensure that students can use the SA as a vehicle for the betterment of Rice.
Student Association treasurer can be a relatively thankless job, in which performance only becomes publicly visible in the case of a complete mismanagement of the role or a major error.
This past Monday, the Student Association passed a resolution calling on almost every department to create more academic minors. According to the resolution, each academic department, excluding the Schools of Architecture and Music, should determine whether they could create minor versions of their majors. The resolution argued that doing so would provide Rice students with more choices in their academic pursuits, as well as better equip them with marketable degrees for the future.
This past Monday, the Student Association discussed a resolution proposed by Martel College senior Danna Ghafir and SA President Justin Onwenu that would aim to fulfill Rice University’s goal of diversifying the international student population. The resolution focuses on socio-economically disadvantaged international populations in particular, and urges Rice to join the International Education’s Syria Consortium for Higher Education in Crisis. The goal is to provide more aid to international prospective students and also conduct outreach to some areas that may not know about Rice.
Rice Housing and Dining’s failure to clearly communicate this year’s change in the move-out date for nongraduating students is disappointing. Yes, students must read every contract in full before signing, however, the reality is that a major change was included in an eight page legal document without any explanation from H&D. (That a college coordinator did not pick up on this change initially either is also telling.) As Jake Nyquist, who co-sponsored SA legislation with H&D, correctly said, the administration makes an active effort to notify students of major changes in policy. H&D would do well to follow suit in future with simple steps: For example, the Thresher is an accessible platform by which the administration can convey changes to students.
At this point we are beating a dead horse. While we understand that Justin Onwenu’s administration is only just gaining its foothold and that mistakes can happen, the Thresher is frustrated by the regularity with which constitutional violations seem to occur at the Student Association (see p. 2). The previous SA administration told us the constitution’s length precluded SA members from following it. And yet here we are, with a much shorter constitution, but facing the same set of procedural problems. If the SA cares so deeply about the constitution that they’re willing to go through the pains to revise it, then why do they continue to completely disregard it? Further, that Onwenu and interim parliamentarian Annabelle McIntire-Gavlick faced such a breakdown in communication to the point where Onwenu did not realize that McIntire-Gavlick no longer considered herself the parliamentarian is alarming. (The Thresher informed Onwenu that McIntire-Gavlick was not the parliamentarian after the Senate meeting on Monday.) Thus, not only is there no advising occurring on constitutional procedure, there is no opportunity for such advising given that the position is apparently vacant. Frankly, the Thresher would much, much prefer not to have a weekly constitutional violation beat in its paper. These violations are ultimately a waste of time, and prevent both the SA and the Thresher from addressing much more pressing and pertinent issues around campus.
Throughout this year’s tumultuous Student Association election cycle, the Thresher has been concerned by a lack of disregard for the SA constitution by our governing institutions.
Though uncontested elections are nothing new to the Student Association, it seems this year no one will be featured on the first round of ballots for the positions of internal vice president and treasurer (see p. 1). Though current Deputy Treasurer Ameesh Shah indicated he will be running for the latter position in the second round, the IVP position still remains vacant, and it is currently unclear if anyone will be submitting a petition for the second round of votes.
The Student Association’s Committee of Constitutional Revisions is in the process of amending the SA constitution (see p. 4). Though the bill convening the committee last spring spoke of “procedural deficiencies” it sought to correct, over and over again, we have heard various members of student government complain that the SA constitution is “too long.” However, without detailed specific concerns regarding the content of the constitution, objections over the length of the constitution seem misguided.
