The Associated Students of Colorado State University Senate heard Student Fee Review Board’s proposal for the student fee package for 2018-2019 in addition to passing the new constitution and ratifying the executive job descriptions presented by President-elect Tristan Syron and Vice president-elect Kevin Sullivan Wednesday night.

New constitution passes unanimously in second vote of 24-0-0

ASCSU Senate unanimously passed a new constitution in its second vote, featuring an updated impeachment process, the redaction of executive sessions and clarified language. 

Senator Connor Cheadle, the author of the new constitution, said ASCSU’s constitution had not been extensively updated since approximately 1998 in an interview with the Collegian. While the constitution is ratified by the student body each year, there has been no successful redrafting of the document in that time, despite several attempts in previous administrations, Cheadle said. 

“ASCSU has had constitutional problems for the last three administrations,” Cheadle said. “We have done something that has plagued us for a decade plus. This will change the entire nature of how we work, the culture, the attitude, the efficiency — all of that will change.”

The constitution specifically changes the impeachment process in addition to several organizational clarifications to ASCSU’s three-branch system and sub-committees and roles. 

Under the new constitution, the formal impeachment investigation process is given over to the Office of Equal Opportunity and Student Resolution Services. As such, any future impeachments must begin with a report to either OEO or SRS, Cheadle said.

However, Cheadle said the ASCSU’s court system still offers a potential means for a removal process due to the internal complaint system and built-in ethics system. 

Cheadle said the University Administration wanted to significantly change the impeachment system following the impeachment of Josh Silva in the fall semester.

“I think we deserve to have a system in which we are able to remove our people, HR or not,” Cheadle said. “If we are an independent organization, we should be able to fire our people.” 

In clarifying legislative processes, the constitution also instates a new statutes process similar to that of the United States Congress. This is intended to keep track of all the active executive, legislative and judicial documents, Cheadle said. 

Cheadle said he hopes that, with the clarified constitution, ASCSU can now look beyond the internal issues of the body, by allowing the organization to better focus their efforts.

“We get a lot of criticism for being too focused internally,” Cheadle said. “We were focused internally because we had internal problems. We had to focus on ourselves first before we could even begin to focus externally. This constitution fixes that.” 

Student fees presented to senate 

Vice President Cole Wise presented the proposed fee increases for the 2018-2019 academic year to the Senate on behalf of the Student Fee Review Board.

For full-time, on-campus students the proposed fee increase is $18.82, a 1.59% rise from the current fee. Wise said this was the lowest fee increase seen in quite some time. 

“I had the unique opportunity of coming in at semester,” Wise said. “We worked really hard to make sure that we were very cooperative and kept the lines of communication up throughout the whole thing.”

Wise said most of the increases were the result of rising mandatory costs, including minimum wage, maintenance and salary increases. 

The proposed General Fee totals for the 2018-2019 academic year are: 

• Full-time, on-campus students:$1,202.56
• Full-time, off-campus students:$480.07
• Part-time, on-campus students:$312.54
• Part-time, off-campus students:$206.34

Next week, the body will vote to approve the fee package. If it passes, the proposed package will move on for the Board of Governors to finalize.

Executive positions ratified, reflect new administration’s goal

In a vote of 24-0-1, the ASCSU Senate approved the executive job descriptions presented by President-elect Tristan Syron and Vice president-elect Kevin Sullivan. The jobs reflect the goals of Syron and Sullivan to deliver on campaign promises such as improved parking, informative registration and food insecurity. 

Sullivan said clarifying expected collaboration across executive roles was a priority in shaping the adminsitration. 

“It’s kind of like if you were building a puzzle, and everyone had different pieces, you couldn’t make the puzzle without sharing the pieces,” Sullivan said.

Changes to the roles also include a proposed audit of American Disability requirements being met on campus by the Director of Diversity and Inclusion and an increased presence of the Graduate Affairs Director in order to better represent graduate students.

“Every single change that was presented to us, we accepted, because it’s really up to you all what we do with these,” Syron said.

Collegian reporter Natalia Sperry can be reached at news@collegian.com or on Twitter @Natalia_Sperry.