GUSA President Kelley Hampton (SFS ’05) released a proposed overhaul of the Student Association constitution Wednesday, calling for a representative Student Council which would allocate voting rights to the leaders of campus organizations.

Hampton said that a new system of representation would benefit the “everyday Hoya,” enabling students to hold elected officials accountable and providing students with an avenue of recourse.

“I feel that the current system constricts us,” she said. “It doesn’t let us do what we want to do, and it doesn’t let us have the conversations we should be having.”

Hampton said that John Huyette (COL ’05), WGTB general manager and a personal friend, approached her early last summer with the idea of drastically revising the constitution. Working with GUSA Vice President Luis Torres (COL ’05), the two attempted to solve the dilemma of the Student Association being “a student government that has no student body behind it.”

The revised constitution adapted a previous version first proposed in 2002.

Hampton also collected input from the heads of various Student Activities Commission groups, as well as from Happy Johnson (COL ’07) and Vikram Agrawal (SFS ’07), among other student leaders.

“It’s not a new constitution, but a compilation of constitutions,” Hampton said.

Some representatives, including Sam Hill (SFS ’05), Pravin Rajan (SFS ’07) and Nate Wright (COL ’06), said they were angered by the Assembly’s absence from the revision process. Both Johnson and Agrawal and also Rajan and Wright comprise two of nine tickets which will appear on the GUSA ballot on Feb. 16.

“I was blindsided,” Hill said. He said that the proposed constitution is hardly different from its 2002 form.

That proposal, headed by Jack Ternan (COL ’04) and Jack Cook (SFS ’03), failed in a student body referendum in March 2002. It did, however, call for changes to both the systems of representation and student group financing.

Hampton said she wanted only to improve student representation, maintaining that the current financing process worked well. Accordingly, the new constitution charges the Assembly with maintaining exclusive jurisdiction over the allocation of funding, office space and other resources.

The new constitution calls for a three-part representative body. The Student Council would include the leaders of on-campus groups and would have the authority to decide matters not explicitly in the purview of the GUSA Assembly.

The proposal would divide Student Council members into nine groups, or “clusters,” according to their organization’s role on campus. Each “cluster” would elect one representative to the Assembly. Those representatives would join the GUSA president and vice president, the president and vice president of each class, the presidents of the Academic Councils of each school and two representatives from Interhall, in the Assembly.

Seats on the proposed Student Council would not guarantee funds for organizations which currently do not receive a SAC budget, Hampton said.

The organization would include the entire population of full-time and part-time undergraduate students, with a quorum of one-quarter of the student body necessary to conduct any vote.

In an e-mail, former GUSA President Brian Morgenstern (COL ’05) said that a principal problem of the Student Council proposal is that it is “idealistic,” forcing students – especially campus leaders already involved with other organizations – to participate in student government.

“It is unrealistic to expect at least one-fourth of the student body to meet each semester, or at the beck and call of the GUSA president,” Morgenstern added.

The proposed restructuring is reminiscent of Georgetown’s former student government, the Yard, which existed from 1871-1969 but represented only the College. Ternan said that the Yard model would “benefit student advocacy, enabling students to form united fronts on issues.”

He added that similar proposals calling for a return to the Yard have emerged on several occasions since GUSA was founded in 1984.

Johnson, a presidential candidate in the upcoming GUSA elections, described GUSA’s purpose as being an inclusive vehicle for students to express their concerns and ideas about student government.

“This referendum will motivate Hoyas from every corner of the Hilltop to become proactive agents of change,” he said.

Wright said he feared that students not involved in campus groups would be underrepresented in the new model. He also echoed orgenstern’s concerns about student body concentration.

“Even if you came up with the perfect system, you wouldn’t get students interested enough to buy in,” he said.

Hampton said that much will be left to the bylaws. The revised constitution stipulates that a committee to compose new bylaws would be formed by May 1 and the committee would submit the bylaws to the current Student Council in the fall.

Hampton said he will address the new constitution at a meeting this afternoon. She extended invitations to several members of the Executive Cabinet, as well as students whom she had been consulting throughout the revision process.

She added that she hoped that the new constitution would be able to appear on the ballot for the Feb. 16 GUSA elections.

“People can change the constitution whenever they get the vote up to change it,” she said. “I want to get it done before I leave.”