IUSA bylaw revision nearing completion

After half a decade of minor yearly changes, the IU Student Association bylaws are undergoing significant alterations.

The new revisions to the governing documents of IUSA were inspired by a desire to re-empower the congressional branch and streamline the traditionally complicated and wordy document, said Riley Parr, a freshman political science major and IUSA intern who collaborated on the revisions.

Parr is one of three interns for Chief of Intergovernmental Affairs Jarad Winget, who spearheaded efforts to edit, condense and update the bylaws this summer.

Winget made initial changes to the old bylaws and sought input and modification requests from other members of the executive branch.

IUSA Congress will spend a mandatory two weeks reviewing the bylaw changes once the document is finalized within the next month or so.  

“The sole purpose of this overhaul was to give power back to Congress, both in structure and in a business sense,” Winget said.

Though the 27 independent changes aren’t sweeping, there are some significant new aspects, Winget said.

Certain congressional responsibilities have been shifted from the executive branch’s vice president of Congress to the legislative branch’s speaker of the house.

In years past, the vice president of Congress has usually handled congressional meetings and has also taken an active role in appointing chairpersons to congressional committees.

“Right now, they’re very executive intensive,” IUSA President Justin Kingsolver said. “We’re trying to give more power back to the speaker of congress and committee chairs.”

Such power comes in the form of independent running of congressional meetings and the ability to appoint committee heads, which, to a fair degree, has already been happening this semester, Winget said.

The revisions to the bylaws simply put that policy in official writing.

A second change restructures certain areas within IUSA.

Congress, which previously included many small, specifically focused committees, now supports five main committees that are broader in nature.

The elimination of the assistant director position within executive departments affected the executive branch’s structure.

Previous versions of the IUSA bylaws specifically set forth an executive department structure, while the new bylaws will allow leeway for executives to create and adjust departments.

The revised bylaws will also address the IUSA Funding Board, which gives funds to registered student organizations.

However, this piece of the bylaws will not be heavily edited due to the semi-autonomous nature of Funding Board.

The IUSA elections code, which outlines official IUSA election procedure, will also be packaged with the updated bylaws upon completion of its revisions.

One of Parr’s main focuses this semester was fulfilling Winget’s requests concerning the bylaw revisions.

This involved an initial review of the completed IUSA bylaws in early September.
 The review consisted of making grammatical and structural edits, as well as addressing inconsistencies or holes in the document.

Parr was later tasked to create a presentation comparing the old and newly revised bylaws to be shown to the rest of the IUSA executive branch.

Determining the impact of the bylaw changes, Parr said, depends on how much leverage students ascribe to the IUSA government in general.

“I prefer to look at IUSA as a representative to the University,” Parr said. “If they’re giving more power to Congress instead of the executives, they might be better able to carry out the wishes of the students they represent.”