The Student Government Association senate will take a look at the first code reform bills by the task forces set up by the SGA President Cedric Bandoh.
This bill, written by Chief Justice of the SGA Court of Appeals Taylor Kilroy, deals with the fact that some of the students on the SGA Court of Appeals also sit on the University Hearing Board.
“Most of the time that’s cool,” Kilroy said. “It fails, though, when you have election complaints go to the dean of students.”
Students disqualified from SGA elections because of fraud could appeal to the University Hearing Board if they think university rules were broken during their original hearing. If this happens, Kilroy said, some of the students who heard the original fraud case would be on the bench at the next court.
“Fundamental ideas of unbiased tribunals and fair hearings are implicated when the same student members judge two different stages of the same matter,” the bill says.
The bill will be the first of many reforms to the SGA’s various codes and bylaws, but the rest of the reforms may not be so quick to appear, Kilroy said.
“We’re trying to make sure these are good changes and lasting changes,” Kilroy said. “It’s better to do a good job then a quick job.”
Bandoh set the task forces to work on the reforms partly in response to the problems SGA experienced during the last two election seasons, but they cover much more than the election codes; Bandoh said he wants SGA to “clean house.”
“Part of it does stem from elections … (but) we’re doing a complete overhaul of SGA,” Bandoh said. “If we’re going to be effective in the things we do, we have to clean up internally.”
The three task forces are going over the SGA constitution and bylaws, which govern the general operation of SGA: the election codes and procedures and the judicial codes. When the task forces finish their work, they will package the reforms together in one bill, which will be presented to the SGA senate sometime in the summer, Bandoh said.
“Hopefully the senate will pass it and send it to my desk to sign,” he said.
