The proposed USG Constitution, which went to the student body for vote last week, has failed, according to Nathan Shapiro, Executive Vice President of the Undergraduate Student Government.
The vote was not close. Of the 1075 students who voted on the new constitution, roughly 70%, or 749 students, voted against ratification of the constitution, compared to just 326 students who voted in favor.
Alexander Markow, a USG Senator, expressed his disappointment in both the result and what he saw as the cause for the result. “Fear mongering and spreading [misinformation] were unfortunately the tactics used in this counter-campaign,” he wrote on Facebook.
Members of the USG were already discussing how to move forward, with the general consensus being that there would need to be significant changes to the proposed constitution, and an increase in student input.
Last weekend before the election took place on SOLAR, an individual or organization put up several fliers around campus urging students to “Vote No” on the proposed constitution. The flyer also listed several reasons why, but Markow claims that those reasons were untrue. “Lying to clubs and telling them that the New Constitution would cause them to lose funding is unacceptable,” he wrote.
But new USG Senator Matthew Anderson doesn’t completely agree with the cause for the final vote. “[Regardless] of any misunderstandings, ultimately the students did not like what they read,” he wrote.
Former USG official Robert Romano, who was believed by some to have spread certain erroneous facts about the proposed constitution, wrote in response to Markow’s statements on Facebook that “there were enough real reasons to vote no without having to conjure up fake reasons.” He added that many clubs “honestly didn’t buy assurances that club rights, after being taken out of the Constitution, would be put back in again in the same form through a new amendment process.”
The USG, as written by Markow, will now work on rewriting parts of the constitution to make it more accessible to the student voters.
