Committee revises the undergraduate bylaws

The Undergraduate House of Representatives (UHR) committee has finished creating proposed amendments to the undergraduate bylaws. On UHR's ratification of the new bylaws, the conference committee looking into the new Student Activity Fee (SAF) Allocation Policy will be able to move forward from the gridlock in which it has currently been residing.

Two main issues addressed by the committee were the Appeals Process and the addition of the Joint Finance Committee (JFC) policy into the bylaws, making the policy a binding document.

The Appeals process was revised to allow any member of Student Government (SGA) to file an appeal from any position. The appeal will be sent to the Undergraduate Judicial Committee (UJC) and the Chief Justice of the UJC will look at the appeal as a type of arraignment hearing. If the Chief Justice feels that the appeal has merit, the full UJC will hear the appeal and make recommendations to SGA on how to move forward regarding the issue. If needed, UHR would automatically reconsider a bill due to a successful appeal.

"This is a new area for us. There has not been much interaction between SGA and UJC before," said Paul Byrne, the undergraduate executive vice-president.

The second aspect of the revisions to the bylaws was the addition of the JFC policy to the bylaws. It used to be that the JFC would make a recommendation to the SGA and the grads and the undergrads could choose to follow or not to follow the recommendation arbitrarily.

"[By adding the JFC policy to the bylaws], it maintains the integrity of the process. It shows that we are following our own rules and that we are not making it up as we go along," Byrne said.

The new bylaws will be voted on Tuesday. If the bylaws are approved by the UHR, then the conference committee looking at the SAF policy will be able to move forward in their debates.

"The debate over the two forms of the bill was postponed until both the grads and the undergrads had a chance to go through their bylaws and make the appropriate changes," Byrne said. According to Byrne, the conference committee will reconvene in a week or two and continue their debate on the SAF policy.

"I don't expect a whole lot of debate after the bylaws are passed," Byrne said.

After the conference committee has finished their debate on the SAF policy, the conference committee version of the bill will be resubmitted to both chambers of SGA. The chambers will then debate on the conference committee version of the bill and then bring the bill to an up or down vote. Once the bill has been passed by both houses, the SAF policy will be ratified in SGA.

The process has taken a year to get to this point and has gone through many steps during that time.

Back in February 2006, the first discussions were made to possibly overhaul the financial process.

After the initial talks, a formalized committed was created to draft a proposed revision for the JFC policy. At this point, it was decided that an entirely new policy would be created and not just amendments to the existing policy.

After the new policy was created, it was put into bill form and submitted to both chambers of SGA. Both chambers made their own amendments to the bill and passed the bill in their own forms.

Because the bill was passed in different forms, the policy was sent to conference committee so the graduates and undergraduates could sort out their differences in the policy and come up with a compromised solution.

At this point, it was decided that both chambers should review their bylaws and amend them as needed to fit with the new policy before the conference committee continued its debates.

"People need to understand how hard the representatives have worked on this. Many have spent several hours a week towards this process and their work has been under-appreciated," Byrne said.