Monday, December 14, 2009
Apportion what?
The ASUN Constitution, in article I, section 1(b), requires the Senate to apportion its seats every two years according to number of students in each college or school. The 75th Senate enacted a law to largely remove itself from the apportionment process. ASUN Public Law 75-28. That law provides that the ASUN President is to transmit a statement of the apportionment and of the Senate for the next two years. This is to be done by the first day of December or one week thereafter. To my knowledge, this has not been done. (For an example of what such a statement looks like at the federal level, see this. By the way, ASUN's apportionment law is modeled after the federal House of Representatives apportionment law.)
Some senators, at a recent Government Operations Committee meeting, while discussing Sen. Sean Hostmeyer's efforts to create revised statutes for ASUN, expressed concern over the President having control of apportionment. (Surprisingly, it sounded like it was the first time they had read that provision, given their tone, but that's another story.) That's a farce, because the ASUN President really doesn't have control over anything. The numbers are the numbers, and the equal proportion method dictates how many seats each college gets.
Under my quick count, using the fall headcount numbers (my math here), CABNR will get its long-awaited second seat at the expense of a Health Sciences seat. One little note that could use some senatorial attention is how, if at all, to count the 160 interdisciplinary students, University Studies Abroad Consortium students and bachelor of science neuroscience students. Typically, they are lumped in with Liberal Arts, since all undeclared majors are counted there. Where they get counted shouldn't matter, as they probably wouldn't get counted in a college where 160 could change apportionment.
Another thing that should be looked into is the basis for the headcount numbers. In the 75th Session, the University's method of counting as the basis for ASUN's apportionment caused some controversy. See section 5 of the ASUN law and this report, particularly my dissenting view. Basically, the University's system was claimed to be incapable of counting a single student more than once, as in the case of multiple majors or degrees. This could substantially throw off the apportionment, as is demonstrated in my dissent when using student credit hours as the basis of the apportionment. Just wanted to share my knowledge.
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