On Monday, Feb. 5, UConn’s University Senate approved with an “overwhelming majority” a motion to amend the University of Connecticut By-Laws to provide further representation for students of regional campuses.
The proposal, developed over the span of ten months, was put before the University Senate as the seventh item on the agenda, following previous debates over budget cuts and meeting modalities.
The proposed By-Laws give each of the regional campuses’ undergraduate student governments the ability to appoint their own representatives to the University Senate, the Student Life Committee, and the Trustee-Administration-Faculty-Student Committee.
The principal voice behind the Senate By-Law amendments was Avery Point Associated Student Government President Zachary Boudah, who traveled from Groton to present at Monday’s Senate meeting.
“By-laws treat the Undergraduate Student Government like it is one body, when in reality it is five,” Boudah said in a speech to the Senate. “[They] treat the USG of Storrs as the only authority that can nominate students to bodies within the administration.”
“Nearly 5,000 regional campus students had no representation until last year, and even then, the seats were vacant,” Boudah detailed, “students like myself and other campuses need to be able to be here and participate.”
University Senators in attendance, including members of the administration and professors elected to the body, expressed overwhelming support for the amendments.
Tina Reardon, who taught at UConn’s now-defunct Torrington Campus for over twenty years, was one of the professors to speak in support of the proposal.
“The ASG was very active in Torrington,” she said, “yet because they had no representation, it reinforced the sense that regional campuses’ students are lesser and not part of [the] one UConn nation.”
According to current By-Laws, undergraduate student seats for these committees and organizations are allocated by the Storrs USG, governed by President Jon Heidan. While Heidan’s 2023-24 selections for the University Senate included direct representation for all regional campuses for the first time in the university’s history, the choice is still his alone to make.
“I have to give big props to Jon Heidan, [Vice President] Peter Spinelli, and [Comptroller] Ben Keilty, really the big three who took on the lead here to help me with this process,” Boudah said, “I’ve been working with and communicating with each campus, essentially educating every student I know who didn’t understand what the Senate was about.”
While the University Senate approved all five of the relevant proposals, only some of the proposals referred strictly to their own by-laws. The others, Boudah notes, were merely recommended by the University Senate for consideration by the Board of Trustees.
“I’m very confident that they’re going to take swift action,” Boudah said to the Daily Campus, “I made it a point to recommend that the Board of Trustees act swiftly here, and I think they can see pretty clearly that what we’re proposing here makes sense.”
Boudah is confident that the Board of Trustees, which meets next on Feb. 28, 2024, will implement his proposals before the next academic year, formally enshrining regional campus representation into the University By-Laws.