GF Passes New Student Group Chartering Process
by Jacob Kramer-Duffield

The General Faculty in their final meeting of the year Tuesday, May 15 unanimously approved a new chartering process for student organizations. The new process, based on a document authored by seniors Jane Glynn and Aaron Leavy, gives greater responsibility and authority to students, and removes the necessity of a General Faculty vote of approval for student organizations. 
One of the main changes in the new chartering process is the creation of the Joint Chartering Subcommittee (JCSC). A joint committee of Student Senate and the Student Life Committee (SLC), the JCSC is to be made up of several student members of each organization and one faculty member of SLC. To avoid conflicts of interest, members of the JCSC who are also members of petitioning organizations will be replaced temporarily by appointed Senators.
The purpose of the JCSC is to work with a group’s petitioning members to construct a workable charter and to consider the viability and potential liability problems of a group’s potential existence. 
As it is composed largely of students and is instrumental in every step of the process (including presenting forwarded petitions to a joint session of SLC and Student Senate), the creation of the JCSC represents a shift in responsibility for the chartering process away from a one centered on General Faculty approval to one centered more on student coordination and cooperation. 
The GF can now choose to discuss and possibly reject student charters during the one month period following JCSC approval. If not taken up by GF, the charter is passed on to Student Senate and SLC for approval. 
During heated discussions at the GF meeting, there was one change to the original proposal as presented by Senate for approval. The amendment changed the procedure for handling a proposed charter approved by JCSC. Originally, Senate and SLC were required to consider the charter within two weeks of JCSC approving it for consideration. After the change, Senate and SLC must consider the charter within one month of its JCSC approval. 
The change, which came after more than an hour of fierce debate over the process proposal and a competing, faculty-authored proposal, was ultimately arrived at as a way of ensuring that the General Faculty might have a chance to review charter proposals during its monthly meeting.
By and large, the proposal’s supporters were pleased with the outcome of the meeting and the compromise process adopted by GF. In regards to how the amendment went, Leavy said, “It’s like buying a handgun –– it’s a waiting period.” 
“[The change] doesn’t affect the proposal significantly,” Glynn said. “[But] it takes a little of the edge away.”
Dean of Students Peter Goldsmith expressed concern that the compromise might have been worded sub-optimally, and that, “perhaps it would be more useful to insert it after charters have been reviewed by the Committee on Student Life and Senate. But as is often the case with these things, we may just need to see how this works in ‘real time’ and Senate can propose an amendment next spring if it seems that it would be useful.”
The change was made necessary by the concurrent presentation of a new process by several faculty who campaigned against the Senate measure, including Professor of Economics Robert Piron. In decrying the transfer of responsibility the new proposal entails, Piron said, “[If we pass this] we will have ceded something rather important that I think we’d rather have.” 

Piron’s competing proposal essentially made the chartering process into a one-month wait for GF consideration; it went up for a vote before the GF, and failed 46-25. The GF then voted on the amendment to the Glynn-Leavy measure, which passed 44-29. The amended measure passed unanimously.
The new chartering process was in some ways a child of last year’s failed SECURE chartering attempt and a previous attempt at chartering process revision. Glynn said she “[Feels] almost guilty because other people worked so hard so long on a chartering proposal and we got there so quickly…because they did the work.”
Leavy agreed, and added, “We had seen the mistakes that they made. [Plus], we were both really experienced in GF floor fights. After SECURE there was nothing at GF that was going to shock or scare me.”
Goldsmith, however, was generous in heaping praise on Glynn and Leavy, saying that they “adopted a thoroughly pragmatic strategy which proposed something less than they might have ideally wanted but which had the immense advantage of having some reasonable chance of being approved –– and it worked.”

As far as actual implementation goes, Glynn, Goldsmith and Leavy are all taking a wait-and-see attitude. Leavy said, “The biggest challenge for me is who’s going to oversee the process. If it goes rough, maybe that’s a good sign. I believe students will rise to the occasion.”

Goldsmith was likewise optimistic, saying, “I believe that this will place more authority in the hands of students for approving student charters, and will get the General Faculty out of the business of having to approve every charter that comes down the pike.”

Summing up the general enthusiasm, Glynn said “I’m pleased as punch. I wish I could be around to charter some groups.”