Student Congress to Redraw Representative Districts

Congress' new plan consolidates the system of representation and creates one superdistrict for seats representing off-campus students, excluding those living in Granville Towers in or Greek houses.

Students in Granville Towers still will have their own district, and Congress added a district for houses under the supervision of the Office of Greek Affairs. The overall number of seats in Congress will remain the same.

The Student Code mandates that Congress must redistrict every two years. The new plan will take effect in time for the February general elections.

Student Congress will include representatives from 18 districts now that eight have been eliminated in the process.

Blair Sweeney, Congress' Rules and Judiciary Committee chairman, has spearheaded the redistricting effort all semester and presented his plan to Congress on Tuesday.

But when moderate discussion called for minor adjustments to Sweeney's original plan, which was designed with 17 districts, Representative Margaret Thomas offered an alternate plan that created a separate district for Carmichael and Whitehead residence halls. Thomas' alternative was passed by the full Congress as the final plan.

The new districts considerably simplify Congress representation, most notably for the body's graduate seats.

Instead of nine graduate districts that represent different areas of study separately, new districts are allotted for individual professional schools. All other graduate concentrations are represented in one district, signified as arts and sciences.

One major problem with the system in place has been that students who live off campus have trouble determining which district they live in, which some have given as a reason for low turnout in past elections, Sweeney said before Tuesday's meeting.

"It has always been a challenge to find how many students live in neighborhoods, so we combined all the off-campus districts into one superdistrict," Sweeney said.

He said he also looked at doubling the size of Congress but that bill didn't get through his committee.

"Eventually it would be a good idea, but it would be necessary to rework the rules," Sweeney said. "We couldn't have 80 people that could speak as long as they wanted to. We would have to have the rules similar to those in the U.S. House of Representatives to divide up time to seats."

Sweeney said he hopes the redistricting will help problems with recent congressional resignations and subsequent special elections.

"There are always people who resign," he said. "Even U.S. congressional districts need to have special elections. But I think (the new plan will) help."

Staff Writer Brian Hudson contributed to this report.

The University Editor can be reached at udesk@unc.edu.