If you ask any student walking on Healy Lawn what the Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA) is and does, they are likely to be confused about how it works and say it does nothing. And they have a point. 

While GUSA does plenty of essential work for the student body, like appropriating funds for student life, advocating for key issues and implementing long-term student projects, most parts of GUSA don’t work the way they were intended to. We have a constitutional council that barely meets, a senate that is passing legislation that is not binding and policy groups that actually work but are buried in mountains of bureaucracy. The principal problem we face is that GUSA is organized like a national government instead of a union. This inefficient structure makes it difficult to impossible for students to be involved in campus government without running in exhausting elections. The senate, which contains most elected representatives, is relegated to a largely symbolic and a terribly inefficient role. And the executive is overly hierarchical and bureaucratic, having more administrative than policy staff. 

All of us on the restructure committee have viewed GUSA from various angles as senators, executive staff, senior leadership or students previously uninvolved in GUSA. Despite our many differences, we have all come to the conclusion that emulating a federal government does not work. Therefore, as the restructure committee, we have contemplated changing this system for roughly a year now, and we are beyond excited to share our plan with you.

So, here is what the referendum will change and improve: The arbitrary division between executive, legislative and judicial will be removed, and there will no longer be an executive, a senate or a constitutional council. The principal job of those elected will be to lead policy teams directly rather than pen legislation that often goes nowhere; the existing system of policy teams will expand and become the primary forum of action in GUSA as an assembly of policy committees. These policy teams are quite efficient, as they survey students, research problems and propose solutions to issues on a much more intimate basis, developing more expertise and valuable contacts with their administration counterparts. In addition, the ethics and oversight committee will have a larger role in the fairer, more extensive and more encompassing management of the work taking place in committees. Most importantly, we will be removing unnecessary hierarchies and reducing the barriers to accessing and becoming involved in GUSA. We are breaking down hierarchies not for the sake of doing so; the hierarchies we are removing are those causing bureaucratic bloat and above all preventing students from getting involved in GUSA. The process of working through leadership, senior staff, coordinators, senate and policy teams prevents students from directly getting involved with issues they are passionate about.

However, though we know change is needed, we don’t intend to “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” This referendum will not affect how club funding is distributed; the composition or the mandate of the finance and appropriation will not change, and GUSA will continue managing the student activities commision. GUSA will continue to effectively fulfill its obligations to other organizations, sharing its resources with organizations that depend on them. The way it conducts elections will also stay the same, with the GUSA election commission staying intact, except there will no longer be separate senate and executive elections. We are also not abolishing the important administrative functions provided by the support units of GUSA, as they maintain an efficient mechanism for liaising with the school administration. However, although these parts of GUSA work well, they aren’t designed to address a core function of GUSA, which is student advocacy and activism; it is imperative for GUSA to evolve to better address the needs of our changing student body and be a better forum for advocating for our needs. 

We hope that over the coming weeks, you, our fellow Hoyas, will take the chance to join this process to better understand how these changes will affect you and to encourage your friends to participate in this transformative event by voting in the Nov. 6 election. We are looking forward to how the future generations of GUSA will benefit from this massive undertaking, and we are immensely grateful to be a part of this process. 

Bora Balçay is a junior in the School of Foreign Service. Dominic Gordon sophomore in the School of Foreign Service.  Nicole Sanchez is a senior in the School of Foreign Service. Dakyung Ham is a senior in the College.