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BSG passes clarifications on petition, referendum guidelines

April 26, 2024

In its final meeting of the year on Wednesday night, Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) passed revisions to constitutional rules on students petitioning for referendums and holding referendums. BSG also discussed increased hours and funding to different BSG roles and offering tickets for Night Hawk’s upcoming Nomad concert to the student body.

BSG President Paul Wang ’24 raised that the petition and referendum rules from Article six of the BSG Constitution were ambiguous, particularly regarding what would occur if a petition or referendum were introduced toward the end of a school year. The proposed clarifying revisions to the referendum rules were based on two past referendums—one from 2006 and the other from 2016, both of which concerned BSG’s response to geopolitical affairs.

The BSG Executive Board passed rules that a petition must occur within the course of a Bowdoin academic year and that after “an exorbitant amount of time”—or four to five months—without a petition reaching the required threshold of 20 percent of the student body for a student referendum, signatories may rescind their commitment to the petition. If a referendum is reached, the voting period will last five days. In the case a referendum opens with less than five days until the last day of classes, the referending party will not be given an extension, but the referendum vote will still occur.

BSG passed a higher allocation of hours and pay for the roles of the BSG social media manager and visual designer, and the BSG secretary. This raises the secretarial work time to five hours a week and $1,900 per year and the social media and visual designer work time to three hours a week and $1,200 per year.

BSG also voted to buy 50 ten-dollar tickets to the upcoming Night Hawk concert at Nomad Theater on May 3 that they will distribute to the student body on a first-come, first-serve basis. In the fall, the BSG voted to distribute 30 concert tickets in the same fashion, and they were claimed within the first five minutes.

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