This story was updated on March 21st 2023 at 12:35 p.m.
The New School´s University Student Senate (USS) internally appointed nearly half of its student senators without giving the student body a chance to vote on their representation for the 2022-2023 academic year – an apparent violation of the senate’s constitution. “Student Senators are supposed to be elected in the constitution by a student body. Right now we have senators who are not even elected,” USS Vice Chair Kartik Gupta said.
The USS defines itself as a “self-governing body comprised of student representatives that unifies the voices of New School students.” However, 10 of the 22 current senators were not elected by New School students through a standard, annual election and were instead appointed by existing senate members.
“We had many [11] members who joined for the fall and left during the summer so when we were coming in, we had many vacancies which we had to fill,” USS Head Chair Shivam Sachdeva said.
The USS constitution has specific guidelines to tend to vacancies in the senate.
- The first step states the USS Chair “may reach out to the runner-up for the division to fill the position.”
- The second step states “the USS may solicit petitions from eligible students in the said division to join the Senate,” pending a minimum of 50 student signatures.
- The third step allows for an internal appointment if “both runner-ups are exhausted and solicitation of petitions has failed.”
The USS did not adhere to the second procedure before skipping to an internal appointment pending confirmation – which can only occur “in the event that both runner-ups are exhausted and solicitation of petitions has failed.”
When asked about how the vacancies were filled, the USS advisor, Director of Student Leadership and Involvement Andrade Fearon, and student senators said it was through a “special election” … “because of the large number of vacancies which we did have … We felt [it] was a bit more streamlined and allowed us to get to the work a bit quicker, rather than going the petition route,” Sachdeva said. Under the USS constitution, a special election may be held and voted on by the student body if all prior options are exhausted.
Members of the USS repeatedly used the words “special election” to describe the internal appointments. Under the constitution, a special election was not formally triggered. USS Head Chair Sachdeva admitted to referring to a typo in the constitution. “Many of the edits that were made, stuck to the Constitution of the year prior,” he said.
The USS’s Constitution has been updated for the 2022-23 school year, yet a typo in the special election section remains. Section 4. (c) of the current USS constitution states that “Special Elections shall be overseen by the executive board, following elections procedures specified within [Article 7].” But Article 7 in the USS constitution focuses on “Removals and Impeachment” in the senate, instead of referring to Article 8, “Vacancies and Elections.”
The USS did not hold a campus-wide vote to fill their vacancies. Instead, they sent out a google form in a school-wide email to recruit potentially interested students. All internally-appointed senators filled out the form to run and were then interviewed by the executive student senate board over Zoom, who decided whether they would be fit to join the senate.
An internally-elected student senator who asked for anonymity to speak freely said they believed there was a vote, but didn’t know the specifics. “I think I had a few interviews. There was some kind of vote,” the student said. “I don’t know what the vote was, but I remember there was a vote after on who was to get elected or not.”
Vice Chair Gupta quickly backed out of the internal election because they felt it was an unethical representation of The New School community, they said. They were the only member of the remaining Executive Senate Board members who did not continue to vet candidates for the Finance Committee, Communications Committee, College of Performing Arts Lead, Parsons Lead, Anti-discrimination Lead, and Health & Wellness Lead.
“I felt there were questions that were prepared for us to ask and points for us to stick to during that interview, but I just felt a little lost in terms of how am I supposed to make that judgment,” Gupta said.
In its current makeup, the USS has only 12 representatives who were voted for by the student body in the 2022 spring election. Five seats still remain vacant. All four seats of the Finance Committee, which vets all student funding requests, are held by senators selected through the internal appointment. Many of the senators were truthful about the situation they are in. “I think that any student could do my job and has the right to have the same say and input I do,” said Zoe Barns, Student Senator and member of the Finance Committee. “I don’t think I necessarily have the right to be in this position.”
In the aftermath of the internal appointments, some senators have questioned the integrity of the senate. “The [University Student] Senate is weak right now. It’s weak and it’s very chaotic. It’s a senate that has some people that shouldn’t be there whether or not they were elected,” the anonymous internally-elected student senator said.
In an effort to reform the USS, current senators said the voting process for the upcoming election will be formally accessible to the student body. “We’re currently finalizing the election plan right now with the hope that the first communication will go out before spring break … This year for the election, we’re planning for everything to be in person, so we’ll have a ‘meet the candidates’ event as well,” Sachdeva said.
Going forward the USS aims to better advocate for student needs as an independent student government, he said. “We can’t abide by what [administration] would like us to be, we have to abide by what [students] would like us to be,” Sachdeva said. “The question that has been on the top of all of our minds now is – ‘What are we and what are we at this university?”
By the time of publication, the USS had yet to announce when the date and events regarding the 2023 election will be.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that the USS did not contact any runner ups to fill vacancies. According to USS Vice Chair Kartik Gupta, at least one runner up was contacted to fill a vacancy in the senate.