To preserve and improve student self-government, undergraduate and graduate/professional student leaders need to come to a compromise. The “Two for Two” proposal that prescribed a distinct undergraduate government and a graduate/professional student government — each complete with legislative, executive and judicial branches — fell 41 votes short of becoming the student constitution.
This ballot box failure (the second for the proposal) left the student constitution unchanged and plan’s sponsors, the Graduate and Professional Student Federation leadership, frustrated. In an Oct. 31 Daily Tar Heel story, GPSF’s vice president for internal affairs said he filed more than 80 complaints related to the election, mostly against the “No for Both” campaign, which opposed all constitutional change. In the story, he also said he wished administration would intervene.
Given all this, the editorial board suggests a compromise: a new student constitution that would give graduate and professional students their own legislative branch with exclusive jurisdiction over graduate and professional students and control of their full fair share of student fees, all while maintaining a united executive branch of student government that represents the entire student body.
Despite the sometimes toxic nature of their recent conflicts, the leaders of student government (in both undergraduate student government and GPSF) have shown by their dedication to their own ideas that they have the spirit and intelligence to implement a compromise solution well. We hope they do so quickly enough that UNC administration will not feel the need to intervene and, in so doing, sully student government’s traditional independence.
Graduate and professional students have legitimate grievances with the current construction of student government — grievances that inspired the failed constitutional proposal. First of all, while it reserves spots for graduate students, Student Congress does not fill them. Despite the fact that graduate and professional students make up almost 37 percent of UNC’s student body, they fill only three of the 15 seats reserved for them in Student Congress. The bottom line is that the GPSF Senate (the body that the “Two for Two” constitution would have endowed with significant legislative power) is filled with graduate and professional students, while Student Congress is not.
Graduate and professional students do have real needs that could be met by a more representative student legislature. For example, allocating funding for individuals presenting research at conferences — something Student Congress currently does not do — would be an excellent way to promote the University’s mission and help graduate students advance their careers. On the other hand, undergraduate student leaders who opposed the “Two for Two” plan, are right to fear the weakness of a divided student government in relation to the administration and the Board of Trustees.
The “Two for Two” plan’s wholesale splitting of undergraduates from graduate and professional students would likely dilute student voice.
We Tar Heels are in this together, and our student government should reflect that.
