Correction appended.

A committee comprised of Student Union members and one alumnus, which was formed to review the Student Union's Constitution, announced in an email to the Justice that it has come up with a sizable list of proposed changes, about half of which pertain to the Union's finances.

The Constitutional Review Task Force was formed last fall after an amendment to create a constitutional review system, which calls for an independent review of the constitution every four years, was approved by 82 percent of the student body in a vote. Members of the Constitutional Review Task Force include Student Union President Ricky Rosen '14, Vice President Charlotte Franco '15, Chief of Staff David Clements '14, Class of 2014 Senator Andre Tran, North Quad Senator Brian Hough '17 and former senator Ben Beutel '12.

The task force originally planned to present its proposal to the Senate during its March 16 meeting but postponed it until March 23 in order to first discuss it with the Finance Board. If approved by the Senate, the proposals will go to the student body for a vote.

Out of the nine potential changes, five regard how the Union will distribute its money. According to the proposal, the Capital Expenditures & Emergency Fund, "reserved for predominantly finance emergencies or capital expenditure projects," will be expanded to also fund projects proposed by any member of the student body. CapEx would be renamed the Community Enhancement and Emergency Fund.

A maximum of $200,000 would be allotted to the projects for which students can apply, while a set amount of $50,000 would be reserved for time-sensitive projects that "would warrant an emergency status" or in cases in which the potential $200,000 may not serve as enough to fund all the projects, Rosen explained in a follow-up email to the Justice.

In an interview with the Justice, Rosen, who argued in favor of the amendment to create a review system and sits on the task force, explained that the potential $100,000 being added to the fund would come from the Union's surplus and unused "rollover" funds.

If those funds exceed the maximum of an amount of $200,000, then any extra money will roll over into the next semester or year for F-Board to reallocate.

Several of the finance-related proposals concern the F-Board specifically. In one proposed amendment, the F-Board would be renamed the Allocations Board. According to the proposal, the name change would make the board's function "clearer" to students and avoid confusion of its role with that of the Treasury.

According the Student Union's website, the F-Board makes decisions on how funds are distributed to clubs, while the Treasury is responsible for verifying and processing club transactions.

Two changes would increase the Senate's involvement with F-Board. According to one of them, at the beginning of the year, the Senate would choose a member to sit on the Board to act as "a liaison in the allocations process" in addition to their standard responsibilities as a senate member. According to Rosen, this member would receive the same training as regular board members and would ultimately make the F-Board "more representative of students" by providing a route for members of the student body to voice their questions and concerns to the F-Board.

"Students can vote and elect an F-Board member, but we think that the face of the Union, the closest link that students have to the Union is through their senator," said Rosen.
"[With this change], students can bring their concerns to their senator and the senator would relay them to the F-Board representative on the Senate, who will have their voices heard in the F-Board process," he explained.

The Senate would also be able to "confirm the Allocations Board's decisions." Along with that change, the Student Union president's current ability to veto F-Board's decisions would be eliminated. According to Rosen, the Senate would confirm F-Board's allocation decisions as a whole at the end of the marathon period.

"Our goal ... here is making the branches more balanced, is having a better system of checks and balances," Rosen said.

Rosen also explained that the president's current capacity to veto F-Board allocation decisions is "almost never invoked."
"Giving the Senate responsibility to approve F-Board allocations in whole, that's almost a positive step to add to the process," he said.

In an email to the Justice, F-Board Chair Mohamed Ali '14 wrote that the F-Board will discuss the proposed changes this week.

In another proposal, the amount of funding for a secured club would be defined as a percentage of the Student Activities fee, rather than a set amount. This would remove the need to update those amounts every year.

As for non-finance related changes, one proposal would include the addition of intra-union meetings, a policy already implemented by Rosen to increase "collaboration between Union branches."

Changes to the language of the constitution consist of the addition of the definition of recognized, secured and chartered clubs to the constitution. These edits are not just limited to the bylaws; there is also a removal of a section regarding petitions and simplifying the language of the constitution overall.

According to Rosen, the removal of the petitions section is the least significant change. According to the text of the proposal, the removal of this section would not prohibit petitions. Because of its "ambiguous" language, Rosen said that the task force decided it would be better to remove the section.

Other changes discussed by the task force that did not make the list of provisions to re-consider were the formation of club associations overseen by councils and altering the structure of the Senate to a bicameral, or two-chamber, system.

In March 2013, a committee unveiled a proposal to group the University's 275 clubs into 12 associations based on their missions and interests, while still maintaining each club's individual existence. Each association would be overseen by a council of seven members, elected from the clubs within the association and a faculty or staff member would be appointed to work with each association.

While the proposal received feedback over that semester, Rosen said that the task force chose not to include it in its list of changes, Yet, he stated that other senators or task force members might tackle the issue next academic year.

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The article initially referred to Ricky Rosen '14 as the Student Union vice president. He is, in fact, the president.