As the newly elected Judiciary and Honor Committee representatives prepare to take office in April, two Judiciary support officers are spearheading a committee to examine the number of representatives allotted to each school at the University.
"It seems a little favorable to the small schools," third-year College student Eli Dejarnette said.
Dejarnette and third-year College student Angela Carrico, both Judiciary Committee investigators, said they began discussing the issue of representation last semester.
Currently, the committees have three representatives from the College and two representatives from every other school, although the Judiciary Committee does not have representatives from the School of Continuing and Professional Studies. The Honor and Judiciary committees are composed of 23 and 21 members respectively.
Carrico and Dejarnette pointed out that the College comprises half of the University, but less than a quarter of the membership on the committees.
"Even in the caseloads there's more people from the College," Dejarnette said.
This poses a problem during elections, Carrico added.
"This year there were five extremely qualified candidates in the College," she said. "Other years we've had to go to the Nursing School and the Architecture school and basically beg people to run."
Carrico and Dejarnette said they tentatively discussed increasing the number of committee representatives from the College to six, the number of Engineering representatives to three, and decreasing the number of committee members from the Nursing and Architecture schools, among others.
"I'm open to all ideas," Dejarnette said. "I'd like to get a variety of viewpoints."
They will open the dialogue to interested students with the formation of an ad-hoc committee to begin meeting after spring break.
If the ad-hoc committee agrees on a recommendation, they will make a proposal to the Judiciary and Honor Committees in time to add it to the fall ballot as a referendum.
Judiciary Chair Katie Graney and Honor Chair Chris Smith said they were open to exploring the idea of reallocating seats.
"The issue of representation is a very important one," Smith said. "The Honor Committee is happy to take part in this dialogue."
Approximately 10 Honor support officers said they plan on joining the ad-hoc committee.
"I think it's good to look into new things," Graney said. "There is a disproportionate amount of judges from all the different schools, but we also need to make sure we don't lose the diversity coming from the schools."
Carrico and Dejarnette will recruit interested committee members and support officers at the next Judiciary Committee meeting, but they said they already have received interest.
"We know we have a fair amount of support there," Dejarnette said.
Carrico said she is excited the committee is becoming reality.
"This is one of those things that people have talked about for a long time and not really done anything about," she said. "So we're going to change that."
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