Two years after first discussing the Executive Committee Restructuring proposal, Student Union has passed the proposal to provide better funding and organization for student groups.

In order for the proposal to be enacted, students will have to approve it during Student Union (SU) elections on March 4 and 5.

The proposal aimed to eliminate the “executive committee” designation granted to 11 Washington University student groups—WUTV, KWUR, Hatchet, Filmboard, Team 31, Gargoyle Committee, Campus Programming Council (CPC), Student Health Advisory Committee (SHAC), Mr. Wash. U., Sports Club Federation and Connect 4.

These executive committees were created because they programmed events that required bloc funding or were special projects of executives, among other reasons.

“There is no documentation about how executive committees came to exist or what their purpose was,” Vice President of Administration Jeff Nelson said last fall.

In place of the executive committees, the restructuring proposal defined some of the groups as “non-category student groups” while others will become Category I groups. These rules would apply not only to these current executive committees but also to Student Union groups as a whole. The proposal also dictates how all student groups will interact and operate.

The Executive Committee Restructuring proposal centered around three topics: the Sports Club Board, the Equipment Committee and the Social Programming Board. The Sports Club Board is a new incarnation of the Sports Club Federation. The chair of this board, nominated by representatives of member clubs, will be known as the Director of Sport Clubs and will become an officer of the executive branch.

The Equipment Committee will seek to manage equipment purchased with Student Union funds and will allow Student Union to maintain an information database of equipment in order to make smarter decisions about equipment purchases.

The Social Programming Board is now charged to “strategically plan large-scale programs that appeal to a large portion of the student body” and to increase collaboration and communication between student groups.

Treasury passes the resolution

Instead of approving the proposal as a whole, Treasury went through every statute of the proposed bill and approved each section.

The first debate in Treasury centered on how equipment purchased partially by fundraising from student groups and partially funded by Student Union would be managed. Most of the objections came from KWUR, whose members did not feel comfortable about how the Equipment Committee was to decide who managed what equipment.

Jill Carnaghi, associate vice chancellor for students, emphasized the unified nature of Student Union.

“In my mind, it’s all Student Union,” Carnaghi said at the meeting. “In the end, it really is all owned by Student Union. KWUR is Student Union.”

However, KWUR did not agree with Carnaghi.

“KWUR is a part of Student Union, but it’s a constituent organization. It’s not synonymous with Student Union,” KWUR Personnel Director Brent Rubin told Student Life.

“When Jill made that argument that we’re all a part of SU, I was a little surprised because I think KWUR is a far more integrated body among the students, and I don’t see that type of collaboration that she’s talking about,” KWUR General Manager Kinsley Makielski said.

The second major point of discussion for the night centered around the makeup of the Social Programming Board. CPC President Jeremy Carlson disagreed with the proposal that the vice president of programming on the Social Programming Board would appoint half of the board’s representatives when it was the job of the individual groups to program. No major changes, however, were made to this section.

After the proposal was passed, Treasury held elections in order to seat the chair of the Equipment Committee. Freshman Daniel Bernard and sophomore Peter Glaser were elected as co-chairs.

“People were really respectful, and I think groups got a chance to express themselves and at times when they didn’t get a chance, I went over and talked to them and we changed the meeting around to accommodate them and make additional comments,” Nelson told Student Life.

Senate meeting

The Executive Committee Restructuring proposal faced more resistance in the Senate meeting held on Wednesday, Feb. 11 that ended a few minutes before 2 a.m. but still passed with overwhelming support.

“I felt that the meeting was good because it passed. I do think that that meeting in particular was frustrating, because they felt the senators didn’t read the proposal beforehand, and we spent a lot of time going over issues that could have been resolved months ago, but I think overall, people were happy with the product that was passed,” Nelson said after the meeting.

Moving forward

Now that the proposals have passed in Senate and Treasury, focus turns to how to turn these proposals into law. Foremost is the Equipment Committee’s goal to catalog equipment and implement a structure before Student Union elections in a couple of weeks.

“This may seem like the long tedious piece. To me, this is the easy piece. Passing legislation is not the difficult part. The difficult part will be bringing this to life, implementing it, institutionalizing it, having it make sense, having it fulfill all expectations it was set out to, and like any good conceptual model, certain things may be tweaked,” Carnaghi said.

Carnaghi was impressed that Student Union executives stayed with this project to see it through.

“It’s not one person’s baby. There’s a whole list of people [who] saw that there are ways we could do this better so they stuck with it. All too often, as officers and leaders change, your agenda gets pushed to the side and the next one comes on, so there must be some merit for this proposal to persevere this long.”

Following last year’s contentious General Budget meetings, Carnaghi was also pleased with “the civility and respect of everybody in the room and the fact that people listened.”

“No one individual sabotaged the democratic process. I think it was Wash. U.’s student leadership at its best. I’d like to think that it’s always like that.”