Vote "other"

When the student body votes in the Duke Student Government election this upcoming Tuesday, a new constitution resolution will also be on the ballot. The document seems to be effectively brief, but sometimes what initially appears to be sweet can be quite sticky in application.

First, there really is a gender issue, as noted by the public protest of two DSG senators. The use of the male pronoun in the constitution is noteworthy in its rarity of use-only six times by my count in a document that has more than 3,500 words. And only three of those pronouns actually seemed to make the document any easier to read. In most cases, the authors elected to use gender-neutral language, but not consistently when referring to the president, the Senate president pro-tempore and all members of the judiciary. The issue comes down to a debate between convenience and respect, but due to the inconsistency of the constitution's language, respect seems to be losing out to laziness.

Then there's the judicial system. According to the constitution, the DSG president can be given the power to pick three out of the seven sitting judges, and the Senate picks another three. Procedurally, the proposed constitution only allows the judiciary to meet "when a majority of sitting members are present," but there are no other requirements about meeting frequency. It's not hard to imagine that four of those judges may be sympathetic to the president's or Senate's agenda. If the Senate passes an unconstitutional measure, wouldn't it be convenient if a majority of judges just can't make it to the next few meetings? Or even worse, the judges may meet and simply approve of whatever is before them.

The rules about court proceedings are also questionable. Art. V Section 6 allows defendants to call upon a "reasonable number of character witnesses." Who determines what's reasonable? Is that number 10, five or one? According to the constitution, the judges get to decide. Not many people would argue that zero is a reasonable number, but once we give DSG the power to define it, that decision is no longer ours to make. This clause requires at least some clarification, especially from a student government that is well known for supporting students' legal rights.

What about the article pertaining to the Student Organization Finance Committee? With so much controversy surrounding funding earlier this year, and with the economic recession hitting Duke's coffers, shouldn't there be some serious changes to the governing of the finance organization? Where's the constitutional requirement for real transparency and oversight?

I'm sure that some will criticize my focus on constitutional language over DSG's actual performance. DSG wouldn't be disrespectful toward women, manipulate the judiciary or shirk the responsibilities its members worked so hard to get. But then why write a constitution at all? Why have by-laws and meeting rules if they're not really necessary?

The reason that all of these rules are written down is so that no person is above the restrictions we set as a community. It's a social contract we make with our student leaders so that we can be assured that the power we give them will be exercised properly. They're not just some empty words on a page written for formality's sake. In the future, we all will be the active members of a larger and more storied society than the Duke student body. And if there's anything that the current times are telling us, it's that there's been too much empty formality, waste of language and failure of management and, when we leave here, we will have the opportunity to change that.

We will be the ones who bring glory back to our world through our ideas and practices. Or we will be the ones to conduct business as usual, blaming others for problems that we should be working to fix and letting our planet crumble beneath our feet.