After a summer free from referenda, agendas and initiatives, Duke Student Government is scheduled to resume Saturday, when its 50 legislators'Äîonly 14 of whom are returning members'Äîwill participate in an informal orientation before Wednesday's first official meeting.
But as the year begins, the group is looking to restructure the most basic part of its organization'Äîthe legislative individual projects, or LIPs.
In past years, it was the job of the executive vice president or her appointee to approve LIPs'Äîa project each legislator chooses to tackle for the semester. This year, however, each vice president will coordinate projects for their committees before turning them over to Justin Ford, this year's DSG executive vice president, for approval.
"For the first semester, the committee will be doing group LIPs," said Ford, a senior. "It will be much more effective in achieving tangible results.... If there are 50 individuals doing smaller projects, there are a lot of bigger projects that can be accomplished if they work together."
If legislators are enthusiastic about coordinating their own project, Ford said, they will have the opportunity to develop a LIP when they have more experience. "Second semester, when they have to file another LIP proposal, that can be much more of an individual project," he said.
DSG President Joshua Jean-Baptiste said DSG's executive board made the decision at a meeting earlier this semester, after discussing it at last semester's retreat.
"There's a decent-sized learning curve that legislators have to go through in order to get projects accomplished," said Jean-Baptiste, a senior. "It also helps the vice presidents get the goals done that they came up with in their campaigns. It provides more man-power for bigger objectives that the vice presidents share for the semester."
Cliff Davison, vice president for facilities and athletics, said his committee set the trend for how DSG will be organized this year.
"I went to Josh [Jean-Baptiste], and I said 'I'm not happy with how LIPs work,'" Davison said.
"I think with the energy that Duke students bring, if we could collect just a few groups within the committee and work toward maybe two or three projects at the most, that would be much more beneficial than having 12 legislators do 12 individual projects and not really knowing what's going on."
This semester, instead of LIPs, Davison said his committee will work in groups on what he calls committee action projects.
Saving LIPs for the second semester will not only be more effective for the organization as a whole, but will also allow the 36 new legislators to grow accustomed to DSG, said senior Lyndsay Beal, vice president for academic affairs.
"Often times you have people that have never really done DSG before, don't really understand... what can be accomplished and what can't," Beal said. "In the fall, [the vice presidents] are trying to provide them with options that we've seen and worked on before... so that they don't have to just brainstorm their own projects that might or might not be feasible."
Returning legislators also applaud the decision to preface LIPs with group projects.
"It doesn't mean that upperclassmen who did DSG last year aren't going to want to jump in and get involved," said junior Avery Reaves. "A LIP is a lot of responsibility. Your vice president is there for you, but you're still fairly clueless, or at least I was. It's better to get your feet wet first."
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