My democratic vision

Things have gotten crazy with student government lately, if you haven't gotten in, google "UWM acerprudens," or facebook "student association".

Anyway, I was complaigning about the corruption in student government and someone asked me "what would you change?" these are my notes.


I imagine a student government like the following. (their constitution, bylaws, agendas, and lots more avaliable on their website.)

A bicamural house (two houses) legislature.

One house, a house-of-student-representatives is made up of one seat for each student organization, as well as one student seat for each student center.
provisions for how vacancies apply to quorom
-A seat is vacant until someone fills it, then 2 consecutive absences and it becomes vacant again.
-Orgs and centers ought to always maintain their right to representation.
-If a house member is removed, the individual, not the group is removed.
-The orgs should have absolute authority over who their representative is (following democratic means), the members cannot be required to be approved by a majority. the "oppression of the majority" would silence unpopular viewpoints (this argument is presented in the Federalist papers, also it is part of the reason we have supreme court judicial review).

Another house, the student senate, is made up similar to the current system, with fewer seats perhaps.

-two issues arrive which may be reasonably argued on either side.

1)is it democratic to approve new senators throughout the year with a majority of the senate?

(a hypothetical explains the problem. Let us say we had this policy in the US senate. Let us say that 25 of the 100 seats go vacant in one year (a percentage similar to SA), and then refilled. So the Republicans have 51 seats versus the Democrats 49 seats. So the first vancancy is filled, no one is suprised that a republican would win, probably in a 51 to 49 vote. At the end of the year, the republicans could be up by as much as 76 to 24!. majoritarian rule is not always democratic.

2) Is it reasonable to allow a person to be a member of both houses?
I think this provision may be reasonable, but it could certainly have some negative effects.

I believe almost all legislation should require a bicamural majority. A veto can be overridden by 2/3 in either house.

So then we have judges. Why do we have the president appoint them? this only works in the Supreme Court because of life tenure and because of strict speration, we know throughout history the judicial system is more rank with scandal than any other branch. My thought here is that since were are infact overseen by the board of regents, we should petition that our court (hell, all UWM student goevernments) be overseen by a appelate-court made up of board members. (this court is limited in scope and can only hear cases brought to them.)

Our students court justices should be elected by the students. One year tenure, (how do we vacate judges / fill vacancy's? perhaps the two houses could set up a search and screen and then have a runoff election)

So then theres the execuitive. This may seem radical, but parlimentarism is far more common than presidentialism, so I think having the Senate and the House vote for the president, and the students only vote for senators and judges would have the following advantages.
1)more than two parties
2)current system all but guarentees the party that wins the presidency will also guarentee they win the majority of the senate.
3)President is held more accountable
4)discourages exectutive growth and abuse because the executive branch is not as stable.

So the system would work very similar to the european model, the president would always have to hold a majority, with the stipulation that another president must be named before recalling the current president.

It might be better to have this system for each individual executive position, this encourages a collegiate executive, and takes power away from the president, because currently the president can fire any executive (and apparently now she can write executive orders removing senators from positions in the SA legislature as well).

Thats all I've got now. Thoughts?