Whereas, the Office of Ethics and the Office of Elections are the independent offices of the Student Assembly, established under Article VI, Section 7 of the Bylaws to provide independent oversight over functions of the Assembly;
Whereas, Article VI, Section 7, Subsection B provides that the Office of Ethics shall consist of seven voting members, and Subsection C provides that the Office of Elections shall consist of nine voting members;
Whereas, the Bylaws presently seat all voting members of both Offices for the duration of one academic year unless the incoming Director renews their terms, so that continuity is permitted but never required, and an incoming Director may lawfully constitute an Office in which no member has previously served;
Whereas, both Offices exercise adjudicative authority, with the Office of Ethics empowered to initiate investigations and recommend intervention and the Office of Elections, sitting as the Elections Committee, vested with interpretive authority over the Election Rules and with the power to disqualify candidates by a two-thirds vote of members present;
Whereas, the Election Rules impose compressed deadlines on that work, including a twenty-four hour window for the Director of Elections to determine whether each specific objection is fit for consideration and a twenty-four hour window for a disqualified candidate to request reconsideration, leaving members little opportunity to learn the procedure as they apply it;
Whereas, recusal is a routine feature of both Offices, as the Director of Elections may recuse any member for a conflict of interest and members may not deliberate on candidates endorsed by an organization on whose Executive Board they sit, so that the deliberating body is frequently smaller than its nominal membership;
Whereas, expanding either Office without also structuring how its seats are filled would not address the underlying problem, because continuity depends on members serving across more than one academic year rather than on headcount alone;
Whereas, reserving a fixed number of seats for members who have not previously served preserves access to these Offices for students who did not join as first-year students, while ensuring that a majority of each Office has served at least one prior cycle;
Whereas, the Bylaws grant non-voting liaison seats to the Greek Tri-Councils, Residential Student Congress, the Student Athlete Advisory Committee, and each byline organization, but provide no seat for the ROTC community, whose members carry service obligations, training schedules, and commissioning requirements that no other constituency shares and that bear directly on academic policy, housing, and student employment;
Whereas, the ROTC Tri-Service Brigade is the standing joint body of the Army, Navy, and Air Force units at Cornell and is therefore positioned to select a representative accountable to the whole of that community rather than to a single service;
Whereas, Article X of the Bylaws permits amendment at any regular meeting by a two-thirds vote of the members present, provided the amendment has been submitted in writing at the previous regular meeting;
Be it therefore resolved, that Article VI, Section 7 of the Student Assembly Bylaws is amended as set forth in the redlined text accompanying this resolution, which is incorporated by reference;
Be it further resolved, that the Office of Ethics shall consist of nine voting members, and that in constituting the voting membership of each incoming Office the incoming Director shall renew the terms of no fewer than five returning members and shall select no fewer than two members who have not previously served in the Office;
Be it further resolved, that the Office of Elections shall consist of thirteen voting members, and that in constituting the voting membership of each incoming Office the incoming Director shall renew the terms of no fewer than seven returning members and shall select no fewer than four members who have not previously served in the Office;
Be it further resolved, that where fewer returning members are eligible and willing to serve than these provisions require, the incoming Director shall renew the terms of all who are and shall fill the remaining seats through the ordinary recruitment process, and no seat shall be left vacant on account of this requirement;
Be it further resolved, that when an incoming Director submits the voting membership of the incoming Office for confirmation by a two-thirds vote of the Assembly, the Director shall report the number of members whose terms have been renewed and the number of members who have not previously served, so that the Assembly can verify compliance before voting;
Be it further resolved, that Article I, Section 3 of the Student Assembly Bylaws is amended to add a new Subsection E providing that the Assembly shall grant the ROTC community one non-voting seat titled “ROTC Liaison,” and that this member shall be selected from the ROTC Tri-Service Brigade;
Be it further resolved, that for the avoidance of doubt, the body referred to as the “Elections Committee” in the Election Rules of the Student Assembly is the voting membership of the Office of Elections as constituted under Article VI, Section 7, Subsection C of these Bylaws, and the membership figures adopted here shall govern that body;
Be it finally resolved, that this resolution shall take effect for the constitution of the incoming Offices for the 2027-2028 academic year, and that nothing in this resolution shall shorten the term of any member seated at the time of its adoption.
Respectfully Submitted,
Eeshaan Chaudhuri '27
President, Student Assembly
Calvin Carpenter '27
Director of the Office of Ethics, Student Assembly
Sophia Trapani '27
Director of the Office of Elections, Student Assembly
