Honing in on Concision and Community: Constitution Revision, Elections, and More at BSG Town Hall

By VIVIAN KOPKA

The Beloit Student Government (BSG) held a town hall meeting on Thursday, Oct. 23 to discuss revisions of the constitution. The event was open to all students, but only a handful of students attended. Among the attendees were mostly Clubs and Organizations (COO) representatives.

The constitution was cut down from 22 to 25 pages for concision and clarity. Among the changes in the constitution, there were alterations to the election periods and to requirements to run for newer executive positions.

At the time of printing, nominations for executive positions are open and will close on Wednesday, Oct. 29, at 4 p.m. However, the constitution implemented an earlier running date for future elections, with nominations starting in mid-September, on the same day as the fall involvement fair. 

The constitution now stipulates that each executive board member must have completed two semesters at Beloit College to be eligible for a position. This was previously the case for all executive positions except for the COO director and communications director positions, which are relatively new positions for BSG. 

The process for making changes to the constitution now requires a majority vote from town hall attendees, hence the Thursday evening meeting. 

Students present were concerned with the new requirements, using Snigdha Dasoondi’28, the 2025 communications director, as an example of a qualified student who only had one semester’s worth of experience when she was elected for Jan.-Dec. 2025. Dasoondi was not present at the town hall meeting, but the executive board unanimously agreed on the new qualifications. Palash Mamtaney’28 was among one of the students who disagreed. “We shouldn’t restrict them from campaigning,” he said. 

An unplanned subject of discussion was BSG’s transparency with club budgets. The budget used to be public to all Beloit students, but was restricted around the time students were back in-person after shutdowns from COVID-19. According to current executive board members, this happened to prevent strife amongst different clubs. Frank Hooton’26, president of BSG, agrees and says it’s not conducive to “look into each other’s wallets.”

Ella Walters’27 had mixed feelings, expressing that transparency with funds is “important, but so is cultivating a community of compassion,” which could be hard to do if allocations were public. Walters argues that the transparency is meaningless without context, and connected it with her Data Narratives class with Tamara Ketabgian: “How can we effectively use that data?” she said. In a follow-up, Walters advocated for training COO representatives to interpret data with compassion. 

Ana Tolentino’27, COO director, said the decision was to prevent individual harassment, “our first priority is to ensure the safety of each student,” she said. 

In a StuAlert email, Powerhouse Director Tara Fox wrote: “[a]re you passionate about making a difference on campus? Do you want to be a voice for your peers and help shape the student experience? Now’s your chance!” The BSG nomination application can be found on the BSG Instagram page or in various student email blasts. Online readers may also click here. 

_{Featured image: Vivian Kopka’27}