Student Union Senate and Treasury passed an amendment to expand the size of the Senate while rejecting an amendment to expand the size of Treasury in a joint session Tuesday night.

Another proposed amendment to create a formalized internal review process to deal with inappropriate actions taken by senators and Treasury representatives was also not passed.

The changes approved by Senate and Treasury will be placed on the ballot in the next SU election, in two weeks. The amendments need 2/3 approval from the student body in order to be officially added to the SU constitution.

While Senate currently has 23 members, the new amendment will increase the size of Senate to 27, a change junior Ben Hauser, Speaker of the Senate and chairman of SU’s Constitution Task Force, said will help Senate better deal with its increased advocacy efforts.

“Now that you see Senate rising more to prominence, with more high-profile initiatives, you see now having more people on Senate will sort of allow for Senate to take these high-profile initiatives and make sure that they can get done and executed to the maximum extent possible,” Hauser said.

SU President and senior Kenneth Sng agreed with Hauser, adding that the amendment is a preemptive measure intended to prevent senators from becoming overworked.

“Senate’s doing a lot more compared to past semesters, and increasing the size of Senate is just a proactive way to prevent additional workload moving forward—to make sure that we are not only amending the Constitution when people are overworked on Senate,” Sng said.

While a similar amendment was proposed to expand the size of Treasury, it did not pass. Some Treasury representatives expressed fear that their discussion processes would not work as well with more members, while others noted that not enough candidates ran to fill all available Treasury seats in last spring’s elections.

Hauser added that some Treasury representatives were not clear on the pluses and minuses of the amendment, noting that the amendment will likely be proposed again next week.

“I think the amendment on Treasury expansion didn’t pass because a lot of Treasury members weren’t aware of the pros and cons of the expansion,” Hauser said. “And I think right now a lot of Treasury leadership is currently working to educate Treasury, just so they can make a more informed decision next time it comes up for a vote.”

The Constitution Task Force also proposed an amendment to establish an internal review board to go over inappropriate actions with senators and Treasury representatives, composed of various members of the governing body’s leadership and led by the SU president. The amendment did not pass, which Hauser said was due in part to concerns of senators and Treasury representatives that the powers of the review board could be abused by SU leaders.

“In terms of the internal review board, the biggest issue we ran into was making sure people knew the maximum powers of the review board, just in terms of the amount of control—not really control—just when the review board would be used and how the results of the review board would be taken into account in the future,” Hauser said. “And I think moving forward, if that amendment is reintroduced, you’ll see a lot more information campaigns, at least on the part of the task force, to make sure that people are aware of exactly what’s in that amendment.”

The governing body also approved amendments to codify a line-item general budget allocation process—the Vice President of Finance was previously not required to submit a general budget delineating exactly where funds allocated toward a specific organization would be used—and to clarify the roles of the SU Executive positions. The new Constitution removes a loophole by which an SU member could hold both an appointed or elected position in SU and Social Programming Board exec. It also more accurately reflects the SU president’s role in advising the Diversity Affairs Council.

More changes are set to be proposed this semester and next, which Sng hopes will both better represent what SU is doing now and what SU hopes to do in the future.

“This is a two semester process,” Sng said. “So, we’ll make some of the changes this semester and some next semester, and I think it’s important for the Constitution to reflect current practices and for the Constitution to be forward-looking so it reflects what we want to achieve moving forward.”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify the student body’s role in the amendment approval procedure and timeline.