USG: Re-defining 'constituencies'

Last week's Undergraduate Student Government (USG) meeting dealt mainly with matters currently before its many committees, including proposals to add a $4 "green fee" to student tuition costs and attempts by the student government to reach out to UIC's neighborhood communities. In addition to this, the committee to bring back the MAP grant is finalizing its plans to lobby the Illinois Congress in the middle of October.

An issue that drew considerable debate was a resolution to amend the constitution of USG to suspend the standing rules pertaining to constituencies. This was proposed by Calcaterra, chairwoman of the recruitment committee. The standing rules in the current constitution require 50% of assembly members to represent one of the constituencies present at the university and allows the other 50% of members to be at-large members not representing any specific constituency. A constituency, as an example, might be someone representing the social sciences.

Calcaterra argues that constituencies limit USG recruitment and make no logical sense.

A vote on the matter has been postponed and, if the rules were to be suspended, the new legislation would not go into effect until the spring semester. The USG has not yet established constituency reps, as the assembly is not yet complete, but around ten members are currently interested in representing certain constituencies.

Other issues dealt with at the meeting included funding from USG for student organization events and the election of new chairs to two committees. Saad Jamil is now the chair of the Constitution Committee and Megan Calcaterra is now chair of the Textbook Assistance Committee. USG also elected a new member, Jose Valencia, who joins last week's elected members: Agnieszka Kirpa, Monika Karczmarczyk, Jonathan Hoekstra, Steve Mower, Nick Hutson, and Alex Rogers.