On March 20, the Undergraduate Council of Students sent an email to all undergraduates asking them to vote in a referendum on proposed changes to the UCS constitution. The email stated that the referendum’s amendments included “the removal of gendered language, the adoption of required language on member removal, changes to UCS positions, the codification of appointed positions and the removal of language redundant with the UCS code of operations.” Students were then given 10 days to vote on the amended constitution. While we see no issue with the proposed changes, the referendum process itself was convoluted and inconvenient for students, exemplifying a student government built on the apathy of the student body rather than participation.
In its March 20 email, the UCS vaguely describes the proposed amendments in one sentence, but does not do enough to help students understand what they are actually voting on. We recognize that the updated constitution has many small, sentence-level changes that may be difficult to summarize in an email. However, the UCS could have easily included an annotated version of the proposed constitution, highlighting and explaining the reasoning behind the changes. While they link both the current and the proposed new version of the document, they do not nearly explain the extent of the changes.
The implication, then, is that the UCS wishes students to read through both copies to find the changes for themselves — a lengthy and, frankly, unexciting endeavor. The alternative is that students are to either vote ignorantly or ignore the referendum altogether and not vote. Given the low turnout of previous elections, we assume that most students chose the latter of these two options. Additionally, voting was inconveniently held almost entirely over spring break — a move that is negligent at best and intentionally disenfranchising at worst.
While the March 20 referendum includes mostly stylistic changes or updates that align with current UCS policy, the practice of not clearly disclosing constitutional amendments could theoretically allow the UCS to bury substantive changes in long documents to avoid accountability. We worry that this is a dangerous precedent that could be abused by future administrations. While it may have been easier for the UCS to simply send the semantic amendments without explanation to the student body, taking the lazy route erodes the council’s credibility as a campus institution.
The UCS administers referendums both to amend its constitution and to seek students’ opinions on campus policy. Per the UCS’s constitution, referendums related to constitutional amendments must receive a two-thirds majority of undergraduate student votes to be enacted. Other referendums serve as a non-binding student poll for the UCS to determine what policies are popular among undergraduates. If properly conducted, referendums would be a commendable way to ensure that the council remains informed by student opinion. Yet, there is currently no requirement within the UCS constitution that dictates how many students must vote in a referendum for its results to be codified, for polling and amendments. Recent referendums have had turnout rates of roughly 9%, 26% and 28%.
After a referendum has been conducted, the council’s Code of Operations states that the UCS is “responsible to represent those majority sentiments in its future actions.” Yet, how can these sentiments be faithfully represented if they only constitute a small minority of students who choose to vote? The UCS has done little to effectively rectify the problem of low voter turnout for referendums. In fact, turnout has only decreased in the last few years. These referendums allow our student government to claim that its policies are popular without actually engaging with a majority of students.
Finally, there is the issue of the level of attention that the UCS committed to the referendum. One of the goals of the amendments was to remove gendered language from the constitution, yet we found two examples of gendered language in the revised version. Article XII.4 of the newly proposed constitution includes the words “himself or herself,” and Article XII.5 includes “him or her.” Such oversights are deeply discouraging. How can the UCS expect students to trust their leadership if the council cannot be bothered to merely double-check its own work?
We believe that referendums are essential for the UCS to receive student feedback, but their current state is in dire need of revitalization. Previous UCS efforts to increase voter turnout, such as candidate forums and collaborations with Brown Votes, have failed. As the editorial page board has previously argued, council members who are voted into office by a small portion of undergraduates can mislead the public when they speak on behalf of the entire student body. In a few days, students will have new leaders after the UCS elections. We urge the new council to return to the drawing board to effectively engage the community and restore confidence in the democratic process.
Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board, and its views are separate from those of The Herald’s newsroom and the 136th Editorial Board, which leads the paper. A majority of the editorial page board voted in favor of this piece. Please send responses to this column to letters@browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
