Student Council is requesting that students attend a series of student government lunch meetings to voice their opinions on a new constitution for student council.
"Everyone at Paly is included in student council," Student Activities Director Allison Davies said. "If they really care about issues, such as how elections are run, they should come share their opinion. Student Council really wants to know what people think."
According to Davies, a new constitution is being written in order to include rules currently absent in the present constitution. The old constitution states the fundamental principles of student government, but the new additional by-laws will address job descriptions of government officers, Spirit Week points and other specific issues.
"They [student government members] want to write a constitution that means something to them," Davies said. "If you look at the United States constitution, the actual constitution is very short. The rest is by-laws."
Student Council will use the California Association of School Business Officials’ (CASBO) model constitution for high school student governments as a basis.
"They [CASBO] wrote a book of how to run high school student councils and how to avoid legal issues that arise from auditing," Davies said. "We are going to start over, using their constitution as a template."
According to Davies, by-laws are an essential addition to the constitution because they can be amended by a two-thirds majority vote from student government, as opposed to the constitution itself, which must be amended by a two-thirds majority vote from the entire student body.
Davies predicts the new constitution will be completed sometime next month.
The first meeting will be Monday at lunch.