Longwood University’s Conduct Board and Honor Board, an extension of the Student Government Association, have been working for years to improve the quality of their organizations. They came to SGA two weeks ago to propose significant constitutional changes which left the majority of the Senate uneasy.
Two weeks ago, Honor Board Chair Maggie Marshall and Conduct Board Chair Haley Talmage suggested completely eliminating the student vote from their election process. They wanted the opportunity to conduct interviews on their own and elect justices in-house.
The reasoning for the change was because certain individuals on their boards don’t take the time commitment seriously, which leaves vacancies during hearings. Often times, they do not meet quorum meaning the trial will get pushed back.
“This is a longstanding issue, it’s not necessarily new this particular year,” said Jen Fraley, the associate dean of conduct and integrity. “The Honor and Conduct Board chairs and leadership have seen in the past couple years that they’ve had a real issue with keeping people on the board that are elected through the SGA elections.”
They brought the constitution before SGA to be put to a vote, but it didn't pass the first attempt. The Senate decided it was not adequate and encouraged them to regroup and come back with appropriate changes made.
Since the first attempt at making changes to the constitution failed, a Tri-Council meeting was called.
“We called the Tri-Council meeting which is three exec members from Honor Board, the Chair and two vice chairs from Conduct Board, the SGA president, vice president and treasurer,” said Marshal. “It went a lot smoother than I thought it would go … we decided to keep the majority of the process we were proposing but there was a few tweaks and modifications to that process.”
It took about 20 minutes of debate until they came to a conclusion, the rest of the time was spent on nailing out specific details. They reached a conclusion which was agreed on unanimously.
The new changes were proposed to senate by Maggie Marshall, Constance Garner and Jessica Darst. They updated senate on the new conclusion and voted on it in SGA’s meeting on March 1 and it will take effect immediately. The process will not have as much time as it will next year, but the application process will open as soon as Dr. Tim Pierson, the vice president of Student Affairs, sends it out to all students.
These changes are meant to help ensure people who run for office treat their positions with the utmost regard.
Marshall explained that this week, the week of Feb. 29, and next week are opened for nominations. After students apply, Honor Board and Conduct Board will review and interview the applicants and narrow down the applicants. The Honor Board chair, vice chair, secretary, then one member who doesn’t have a position will be responsible for reviewing Honor Board applicants and the Conduct Board chair, the two vice chairs and one justice will be responsible for reviewing Conduct Board applicants.
You can still apply for both organizations but you may only serve on one branch.
After this occurs, all of the remaining applicants will be placed on the SGA ballot as they would have any other election.
“From the first go around, there was not going to be a student body vote,” Marshall stated.
They originally wanted it to be all in-house within Conduct and Honor board, eliminating the students’ option to vote, but she ensured the process will not be taking any of the power out of students’ hands.
“I believe this was the perfect compromise for SGA, Honor and Conduct board,” said Jessica Darst, SGA treasurer and Tri-Council member. “My biggest concern was that students were going to lose their right to vote, and as a representative of the student body, I think the last thing they wanted was to lose their vote.”
