Student council begins work on constitution

A group of Student Council (StudCo) members recently began work on creating a constitution for the Uni High StudCo. They hope to first address the issue of clubs due to the recent decision to revoke Coding Club. StudCo is aiming to create an entire constitution to guide their decisions.

Rick Murphy, the StudCo sponsor, says “The committee assigned groups of two people to work on various aspects of [the Constitution], and then they’re going to report back […]. We may not finish before winter break.”

Murphy hopes that the new constitution will be finished before the end of the school year. He says that the group are first working on the club issue, and will present that in Student Council to be approved before they finish the rest of the constitution.

The group has a lot of work to do as the previous constitution was lost. The unused constitution was stored in the Hue House until its demolition, when it was disposed of. Through a clerical error or accidental deletion, the online version was lost as well.

Collin Jung, the secretary for the freshman class, says that StudCo brought the lack of a constitution up last year. He says that they “talked about how we didn’t really have a constitution or a set way to do things.”

Ben Leff, US History teacher and Uni alum, does not remember having a constitution during his time in StudCo. “My sense is that we were largely governed by sort of informal traditions more than any kind of written code,” says Leff. Junior class president Victoria Kindratenko and Jung echoed similar sentiments.

Leff adds, “that said, there was a person whose title was parliamentarian. […] The parliamentarian was someone whose job it was to ensure that the rules of order were being followed […] according to Robert’s Rules of Order.”

Leff says that Robert’s Rules of Order is a common guideline for all meetings. It includes having seconds for motions and following correct debate procedures.

Kindratenko, says that the most important goals of the constitution are to clarify student council’s role in the school, the role of different clubs at Uni, and include procedures. Kindratenko says that the constitution will be on the Uni High website when it is finished.