During meetings held Friday, the student governments of three ASU campuses approved to have their individual student body’s vote on new governing constitutions. The approvals are part of a larger goal to create a so-called “universal constitution,” a single document each of ASU’s four undergraduate governments would follow.
The Downtown government might hold its referendum this week. The Polytechnic and West governments have not settled on exact dates for their student votes.
In each referendum, students will be asked to consider adopting new constitutions for their respective governments.
The constitutions resemble the current Tempe constitution, said Joshua Hoyt, president of the Polytechnic student government. He said the Tempe campus undergraduate government has had many years to perfect its constitution.
“The other campuses are trying to get closer to where Tempe is,” USG Tempe President Jacob Goulding said.
Once the referendums receive student approval, USGD, USG West, USG Polytechnic and Tempe’s undergraduate government will begin working on making the constitution universal, Hoyt said.
Hoyt said student government representatives hope to have the universal constitution finalized by Feb. 28 and then put to a general student vote at all campuses.
Two representatives from each of the four governments make up a committee that helped draft a preliminary version of the universal constitution.
Downtown Sen. Rachel Cassinat, a dietetics junior, was not pleased with USGD’s level of involvement in the document’s creation. She said a lot of the writing was done over the summer.
Major government changes in the document include separating the Graduate and Professional Student Association from Tempe campus undergraduate government. The two groups currently govern under the same constitution. According to the drafted universal constitution, GPSA would govern under its own constitution and bylaws.
The universal governing document would also create a new University-wide Supreme Court that would include representatives from each undergraduate student government and GPSA.
Each government would be allowed to have its own bylaws under the constitution.
“Allowing multiple campuses to function under a single document really brings us together and makes it easier for us to work as one entity and one university,” said Downtown Sen. Katy Graves, a journalism freshman.
Not all USG Downtown representatives approved legislation Friday calling for a referendum. Approval of the constitution carried with a 9-3 vote.
Cassinat was one of the dissenters.
“I felt there was a need for sure to unify the constitutions, but I feel like the students are being rushed now,” Cassinat said.
The Downtown government originally scheduled the referendum to be held on Monday and Tuesday. Andres Cano, the Downtown government director of parliamentary procedures, said Sunday evening the student vote might be held until Tuesday because of “technical difficulties” with talking to the administration. Cano did not elaborate.
Hoyt, the Polytechnic government president, said he would meet with other government members Monday morning to determine when students at the campus would vote. USG West president Josh Tucker said the date for West students to vote is not definite.
“We’re going to shoot for this semester, but finals may push the vote to next semester,” Tucker said.
Hoyt was proud of the unanimous approval of the referendum at the Polytechnic campus, as well as the Downtown and West governments’ approval of the student vote.
“It has been one of the greatest accomplishments and a historic moment for student government,” he said.
Editor's note: Friday’s article “Student government constitution vote expected” was pulled from the website because its reporter was misinformed about several key facts included in the story. The article above clarifies the inaccurate information mentioned in that article.
Reach the reporter at julia.shumway@asu.edu or follow @JMShumway on Twitter.
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