The Saint Mary's Board of Governance has homework over the summer.At Monday's meeting, the last of the year, the board looked over the newly revised constitution. All members of BOG will receive a copy to read thoroughly over the summer to finalize the revisions.Student Trustee Sarah Brown and Michelle Fitzgerald served as the Constitution Committee. Brown said the constitution is meant to provide guidelines for student government."The goal of the constitution is the rules of student government," she said. "It should also have all the policies, such as how do we approve things? How do we hold elections?"The constitution was last updated in 2000. Fitzgerald said that it was "a mess.""We moved, structured, and clarified," she said. "We want it to be a long time before someone needs to do another major restructuring."The committee added a table of contents and page numbers, making the new constitution double-sided and much more readable. They also cut the number of articles from ten to six and the number of appendices from 13 to six."We just combined a lot of them for simplicity's sake," Fitzgerald said.The articles contain an introduction, purpose, the association structure, executive board and elections information and amendments. The appendices cover the mission statement, descriptions of the BOG commissioners' jobs, the Student Diversity Board and Residence Hall Association constitutions and the co-sponsorship application.Brown said that the committee did not change much policy and that the new constitution was meant to serve as "an overall basic guideline.""The only things we changed content-wise were to write a policy for impeachment - there was no way to do that before - and to clear up the amendment policy," Brown said. "It needs to be timeless."In other BOG news:u The campus shuttle will keep the same weekday schedule next year, with stops at the Hesburgh Library; McCandless, Regina and LeMans Halls; and the Grotto. There will be an extra cycle on Friday and Saturday night to accommodate parietals.u Donna Lubbers, elections commissioner, is setting dates for elections next year. She will be forming the elections board shortly.u The BOG committee assignments for 2004-05 have been released. The executive board and budget committee is composed of Sarah Catherine White, student body president; Mary Pauline Moran, student body vice president; Susan McIlduff, chief of staff; Molly Welton, executive treasurer; Martha Hottenstein, RHA president; Lauren Fabina, SAB president; and Ashley Doughty, SDB president.
