On Wednesday, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) unanimously voted to approve changes of the student government’s bylaws at its final meeting for the 2013-2014 academic year.

BSG’s bylaws govern the roles of the student representatives, regulate election procedures, and determine the structure of student government bodies such as the Student Organizations Oversight Committee.

Many of the changes are simply the movement of clauses from the body’s constitution to the bylaws. A newly added article has created more stringent rules regarding attendance for student representatives, setting a specific number of unexcused absences from the assembly before automatic expulsion.

Speaking as to why certain policies had been moved from the constitution to the bylaws, Vice President for Student Government Affairs Allen Wong Yu ’14 stated, “they are here that so when duties change as things arise it’s easier for us to fix them in the bylaws.” If BSG wants to make changes to its constitution, it requires the approval of two-thirds of the entire student body. Editing the bylaws only requires two successful two-thirds votes of BSG itself.

After all business was done, outgoing BSG President Sarah Nelson ’14 symbolically handed the gavel to BSG President-Elect Chris Breen ’15, who adjourned the meeting. 

Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) voted to ratify changes to its constitution at its Wednesday meeting. The vote was unanimous, except for one abstention. The proposed changes now require the assent of two-thirds of the student body, which will vote on them—and for BSG executive officer positions—this weekend.

According to BSG Vice President for Student Government Affairs Allen Wong Yu ’14, the changes were designed to be non-controversial and procedural. They seek to make the constitution a “document that will be useful for the future, and also make future assemblies’ lives easier,” said Wong Yu.

The first article of the constitution, which states the purpose and goals of the BSG, has been largely rewritten to include the College’s nondiscrimination policy and a new “Authority” section, which reinforces the BSG’s ability to change its own bylaws through a two-thirds majority vote of the assembly.

A new accountability section includes text stating that all documents, meeting times and minutes produced by BSG will be available to the public. Most of these documents already are. 

However, there are limits to the transparency that the proposed changes would require. BSG would still be able to hold closed executive sessions and to withold materials at its discretion.When asked by Class of 2015 Representative Daniel Cohen what circumstances might require withholding documents to the public, BSG President Sarah Nelson ’14 struggled to remember many recent examples. She said the BSG Executive committee withheld documents of correspondence with Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster last summer over updating the College’s hazing policy.

BSG occasionally meets in closed executive sessions, usually when the anonymity of students is at issue, such as when it offered final approval of the Judicial Board (J-Board) nominations in February. Another notable example from last year was when BSG executives met with President Barry Mills for a closed-door meeting on the issue of fossil fuel divestment. No minutes were produced, and the Orient was not allowed to report on the conversation.

The rest of the constitutional amendments were not rewrites. Articles concerning the roles of BSG representatives, the student representatives on faculty and trustee committees, and BSG’s role approving J-Board nominations are to be taken out of the constitution, and added instead to the BSG bylaws.

Moving these articles to the bylaws makes editing them easier, according to Yu. Changes to the bylaws require the support of two-thirds of the BSG assembly. Constitutional amendments require a four-fifths majority of the BSG assembly and the approval of two-thirds of the student body. 

Yu said that moving the articles of the constitution to the bylaws was not streamlining procedure at the expense of transparency. 

“Our meetings are always open, and there’s a lot of access points, and we really want to hear from students,” he said. “We don’t hear nearly enough from them, and then after we make these types of changes we hear from them, and we wonder where they were in the deliberation process.” BSG voted to waive its own rule requiring a two-week interval between the introduction of a motion and a vote on it, so that the constitutional changes could be put on the ballot at the end of this week.

Cohen was the one assembly member who abstained from the vote on the amendments. He said that he did not disagree with the content of the amendments, only the method by which they were introduced. 

“Since I’ve been on BSG that suspending the two-week rule has been overused, and I think that especially with the student government constitution, it should be taken more seriously, and that we should have taken some more time to look at it as an assembly before we sent it to the student body,” he said.   

At Wednesday’s Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) meeting, President Sarah Nelson ’14 announced that the BSG will not meet next week, so that student representatives can attend the public hearings on the rate increases proposed by Central Maine Power Company (CMP). If approved, the rate increases could cost the College over $200,000 per year.

There are two public hearings scheduled for discussion of the rate changes. The first will take place next Wednesday April 2 at the Maine Public Utility Commission office in Hallowell. The second is scheduled for Thursday, April 3 at the University of Southern Maine’s Abromson Center in Portland.

Vice President for Facilities and Sustainability David Levine ’16 announced that a 15-minute electricity blackout is planned for April 4 in order to publicize the CMP case. BSG is currently circulating a petition among the student body to protest the rate change.                                                       

At its Wednesday meeting, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) continued the previous week’s debate on the future of BSG-sponsored break shuttle services. 

After receiving complaints about the increase in the price of shuttle services following last semester’s switch in service provider—from Brunswick Taxi to Mermaid Transportation—BSG’s Facilities Committee spent the last two weeks exploring potential cost-saving options. 

Vice President for Facilities David Levine ’16 offered more details on a possible shuttle alternative. Rather than coordinating shuttle services through an independent company, BSG would charter, pay for, and organize the shuttle rides, and—provided enough students take advantage of the service—charge a lower price than Mermaid Transport. The shuttles would run at fixed times, every two hours from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m.  

In their first meeting of the semester, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) authorized funding for Winter Weekend and announced plans to sponsor viewings of the Olympic Games. 

The Winter Weekend motion—proposed by the Executive Committee—included approximately $200 for advertising, $1,325 for Campus Food Truck to be provided both at the Ladd House Blizzard Bash and prior to basketball games, and $354.25 for cups that will be given away at the Blizzard Bash. The proposal passed unanimously.

A revival of a tradition dating back to the 1920s, Winter Weekend 2014 started with the Entertainment Board’s hypnotist on Thursday night and will continue through Saturday night, culminating with the Cold War Party, hosted by MacMillan House and Quinby House. The BSG, E-Board, Inter-House Council (IHC), Alcohol Team (A-Team), Bowdoin Outing Club (BOC), and Class Councils are all sponsoring various events for the weekend 

Bowdoin’s Student Activities Funding Committee (SAFC) has spent just under half of its funds for the year, according to a report given at the last Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) meeting of the semester this week.

BSG Vice President for the Treasury Megan Massa ’14 reported that, after accounting for the SAFC’s seasonal operating budget, the organization has $134,000 to spend on funding student activities this academic year. 

As of the end of the first semester, the organization has spent $58,000 of that amount, leaving $76,000 available for the spring semester. 

Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) met this Wednesday, primarily to review the progress of previously approved mandates before departure for Thanksgiving break next week. 

Vice President for Academic Affairs Jordan Goldberg ’14 discussed an event occurring on campus last night called “Difference at Bowdoin.” 

The event featured two guest speakers, Jeff Cuartas ’14 and H. Roy Partridge, a visiting professor of sociology, and examined difference and diversity on Bowdoin’s campus. Goldberg also noted the success of the ‘Food for Thought’ talks held this past Monday in the Hawthorne-Longfellow Library. 

At its meeting on Wednesday evening, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) hosted Coordinator for Sustainable Bowdoin Keisha Payson for a summary of the college’s initiatives for campus sustainability. 

Payson’s talk focused on the College’s continued efforts to decrease the carbon footprint in order to become carbon neutral by 2020. The College had initially set out a carbon reduction goal of 28 percent of Bowdoin’s actual emissions, compensating for the remaining emissions with offset credits. 

According to Payson, “we are 22 percent below our 2008 baseline, so we are on track for what we hope to achieve. The fact that we’re already at 22 percent is pretty exciting because we still have seven years to go.” 

At its Wednesday meeting, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) sought to offer a response to the recent bias incidents on campus. The assembly unanimously passed a two-part proposal introduced by BSG President Sarah Nelson ’14 that condemned the incidents and sought to brand this month  as “No Hate November”. 

The proposal seeks to allow both BSG and the College—in Nelson’s words—to be “more proactive than reactive” in the future when dealing with dealing with bias events on campus. To Nelson, “No Hate November” is about changing the way that the College and the student body respond to bias incidents. 

“This is something that really affects every single member of our community that deserves more attention than just an event that takes up a few hours one afternoon,” she said. 

Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) discussed proposed changes for club sport funding but did not hold any votes in their meeting on Wednesday.

The meeting began with Meadow Davis, the associate director of student affairs and advisor to the student sexual misconduct board, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Lesley Levy and Judicial Board Chair Chelsea Shaffer ’14, answering questions from BSG about the yearly report by the Judicial Board.

This part of the meeting was held in executive session; all nonvoting members of BSG and the Orient were asked to leave for the duration of the session. 

In its first meeting of the 2013-2014 academic year, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) dove right into business by unanimously voting to retroactively authorize funding proposals that had been implemented by BSG over the summer and during first-year orientation. 

The first of the three proposals discussed on Wednesday night—introduced by Vice President for Facilities and Sustainability David Levine ’16—retroactively authorized an expenditure made over the summer for $12,000 to provide a film service to stream new movies online and over Bowdoin’s cable system. According to Levine, the program is run through Swank Motion Pictures, a company that provides colleges and other institutions with licenses to stream recently released Hollywood films.

According to BSG President Sarah Nelson ’14, the program had previously been under the operating budget of the Bowdoin Cable Network, “but it fell by the wayside last year, so we talked a lot about it and decided that it was a service that was popular enough that we felt it was something that BSG could be providing to students.” The $12,000 covers the rights to the 15 new films—chosen by BSG—per month which will be streamed online, as well as played on loop on a channel of the college’s cable.

In an effort to increase voter participation among students, Bowdoin has recently partnered with TurboVote to make voting an easier and simpler process.

TurboVote, a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization, provides absentee ballots by mail to its members. Through the College’s partnership with TurboVote, students who sign up at bowdoin.turbovote.org can receive election reminders and absentee ballot request forms.

TurboVote will also help students register to vote and provide them with reminders about upcoming voting deadlines. 

Editor’s Note: The Orient will not print over Spring Break, but we will continue to post updates online until classes resume next Monday. We asked Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) President Dani Chediak ’13 for the latest news from the assembly, and here's what she had to report:

At its March 6 meeting, the BSG Assembly unanimously passed a resolution which recommends that the faculty limit the total of courses students can designate as Credit/D/Fail to three and push the deadline for Credit/D/Fail from the sixth to the ninth week of classes. The vote took place after a lengthy discussion with Dean of Academic Affairs Crystal Collins Judd regarding the history of Credit/D/Fail and the feasibility of the Assembly's proposal.

The BSG also voted to issue the following statement regarding the recent bias incidents at Oberlin College: