If freshman Justin Diamond wins his bid for Student Association president next week, he will need to take a series of steps to accomplish his primary campaign promise: abolish the SA.
Diamond, who announced a write-in campaign for SA president last week, will face SJ Matthews in a runoff election Thursday. If elected, Diamond would first need the approval of either the SA Senate or 10 percent of the student body, then the majority of students and
finally, the Board of Trustees to completely eradicate the organization.
While candidates and members of the SA have proposed cutting the organization in recent years, the SA was abolished once before in 1970 after students voiced concerns about an inactive and ineffective senate during the political tensions of the Vietnam War.
The SA, then called the Student Assembly, voted nearly unanimously to dissolve itself on Feb. 27, 1970 after former SA President Neil Portnow ran for re-election with a platform promising to scrap the organization. Portnow intended to replace the body with an “All-University Assembly” including students, faculty, alumni and administrators that would make decisions across GW, according to Hatchet archives.
But the Board of Trustees shot down the proposal in 1974, and students decided to call for a constitutional convention in December of that year to establish a new body for student representation.
The first meeting of the constitutional convention was held on Valentine’s Day 1975 and led to hours of meetings about the structure of the organization and its relationship with administrators. Members of the convention extended their work into the summer and then again into the fall, and a draft of the constitution was finalized in January 1976. The Board of Trustees unanimously approved the charter of what is now called the Student Association in May 1976, according to Hatchet archives.
More than four decades later, Diamond wants to abolish the organization, saying SA senators should not determine which student organizations will receive funding each fiscal year.
Here’s how he could constitutionally fulfill his campaign promise:
The SA’s constitution, which creates the structure of the three branches of the governing body, can be dissolved by posing a referendum to the student body that asks whether the SA should be eliminated. The constitution requires a two-thirds vote of the SA Senate or a petition signed by 10 percent of the undergraduate and graduate student body for a referendum to be placed on a ballot.
Diamond said in a now-deleted Facebook post last week that he would call for a student body petition if the senate does not approve a referendum on the matter.
The constitution mandates that a referendum vote is held within 20 class days of receiving the necessary number of student signatures on a petition or a senate vote.
If elected, Diamond would take the helm of the SA in May, but the tight turnaround between the change in leadership and the end of the school year would likely force him to propose a referendum at the start of next academic year.
If the vote is held in the fall rather than the spring alongside SA elections, the SA president would appoint members to a special elections committee tasked with overseeing the vote.
While a majority vote on the referendum would dissolve the SA constitution – which would effectively cease operations of the body – the SA’s charter cannot be absolved without the Board of Trustees’ approval. The SA’s charter, which gives the SA its authority to represent students and the responsibility to meet the needs of students, requires a majority vote from the Board of Trustees to be amended.
