SHS Constitution undergoes revision

October 21, 2008 — by Anna Shen and Abhishek Venkataramana

The ASB recently handpicked a committee of students to start revising the outdated school constitution, a document written when the school opened almost 50 years ago in order to maintain a set of requirements for those students who wanted to run for student council.

The ASB recently handpicked a committee of students to start revising the outdated school constitution, a document written when the school opened almost 50 years ago in order to maintain a set of requirements for those students who wanted to run for student council.

Revisions of the constitution take place every four to five years due to changes in school policy. The most recent revision took place during the fall of 2004. However, the constitution was subsequently lost, so this year’s changes will be made to the constitution from the late ‘90s.

“[The SHS constitution] is a little outdated,” said assistant principal Karen Hyde. “Time has changed, and it has a lot of things that don’t exist anymore.”

The committee of student amenders consists of freshman Mac Hyde, sophomores Lauren Kuan and Tim Rollinson, junior Sophia Cooper, and seniors Mabel Hsu and Satomi Ishikawa. These students propose revisions to the ASB, who will then consider them and make the final decisions.

“We toss out ideas,” said Mac Hyde. “If we have some ideas we like, we expand on them.”

The ASB, along with the student committee, has already finalized its decision on a couple of issues: an impeachment policy and mandated class representation. The ASB hopes to never use the impeachment policy, which states that if an officer misses two ASB meetings, they are put on probation. If they miss four, they are sent through the impeachment process—the ASB is the judge panel for class officers, while the administration is the judge panel for ASB officers.

The class representation policy hopes to give students “more voice in student government.” There will be two class representatives from each grade and also two academic class representatives from every third-period class.

The committee has also cut many obsolete commissions such as the Entertainment commission, and created the Constitution commission.
Even with all the recent changes, the revision process is far from done. The committee has had two meetings so far and is unsure of when their work will be completed.

“I want to say [the revision process will be done] hopefully before December,” said Mac Hyde, “but definitely not before November.”

The reason many students may be unaware of the SHS constitution is that it is most often used within the student council.

“[Students do not know about SHS constitution] because many kids are just doing school and not living school,” said Ms. Hyde. “I would love [for] more people to know about it [and] to be involved in student government.”

Because the ASB and administration feels the constitution has been “flaky” the past years, they feel it is imperative to revise it.

“[The SHS constitution] is just like [the United States] constitution,” said Ms. Hyde. “Without it, people would be running into doors.”

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