Legislators Push Restructure Bill to Referendum

News – The Emory Wheel

A bill to restructure the undergraduate student government will go to an undergraduate-wide referendum after it passed the 50th legislature of the Student Government Association (SGA) Monday. SGA convened Monday night to host a second public forum on the undergraduate government restructure bill and vote on the restructure and diversity and equity bills.
Bill 50sl24 to restructure the legislature passed 14 for, one against, falling one voter short of quorum according to SGA’s Constitution. However, SGA Executive Vice President and Goizueta Business School senior Gurbani Singh said that the legislature has been deciding votes on simple majority since the split bill referendum. SGA President and College senior Max Zoberman said in a Feb. 27 interview with the Wheel that the legislature did not need to reach quorum to pass the bill because SGA is loosely following the pre-split Constitution so long as it does not prevent them from creating a new government structure.
There is currently a debate on the state of the SGA Constitution. All undergraduate students will be able to vote on the restructure bill in a referendum March 13 to 15 via Orgsync. A simple majority is required to pass the bill.
An amendment to the bill that would have created four new divisional councils under SGA — recreation and wellness, service, arts and media — failed to pass with a vote of 14 against, one for and five abstentions.
College Council (CC) Liaison for SGA and College senior Taj Singh read a letter from CC President and College senior Molly Zhu on behalf of CC to SGA expressing opposition to the amendment to create new divisional councils.
“Members of CC are not comfortable with this amendment because there are so many unknown details of the structure … including chartering and financial impact … and the necessary conversations with constituents have not occurred,” Singh read.
Although CC acknowledged that issues in its “bylaws have left ...

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