Although student leaders have proposed to keep the constitutional amendment procedure at a three-fourths vote, NIU’s Presidential Task Force On Constitutional Revision decided to keep a revision in the proposed constitution which would change the vote to two-thirds.

Student Association President Jim Fischer and SA Academic Affairs Advisor David Baum met with the task force Tuesday and discussed the amendment procedure. “Right now, the students have the ability to stop constitutional changes. With the change, we would not be able to do so,” Fischer said.

Fischer said the constitution should be more difficult to change, and with a two-thirds vote it would be easier.

Task Force Chairman Jim Giles said, “The faculty feels very strongly about changing the vote to two-thirds. I would hate to see the whole constitution go down because of that.”

Giles said there is a possibility the proposed constitution might not pass because of this provision. “If the constitutional revisions do not pass, the frustration level of the faculty is going to increase,” he said.

Fischer said the students have the power to hold up the constitution if they all vote the same way. “We will be having a student caucus to decide what to do … to determine what position we will take,” he said.

Fischer said the students also proposed to change the elected faculty percentage of University Council members from between 51 to 65 percent, to between 51 to 60 percent. Giles said the task force did make this change as well as changing the student percentage from between 25 to 30 percent to between 25 to 26 percent.

“We also have added two additional faculty members and one additional student to the UC,” Giles said. Previously, the task force proposed increasing faculty representation from 23 to 28 members and increasing student representation from 12 to 14 members.

Giles said the task force decided to return votes to the provost and the vice president for student affairs instead of giving their votes to the deans of degree-granting colleges, as previously proposed. Therefore, the voting seats are distributed as follows: 30 faculty, 15 students, nine deans, 3 administrators and two staff members.

The task force also added a clause to Article 8 of the constitution which would increase minority representation on the presidential search committee. Also, three additional faculty members and one additional student have been added to the search committee in order to vary distribution between the colleges, Giles said.

UC Executive Secretary Judith Bischoff said the council will be voting on the proposed constitution on Dec. 16. If approved by the UC, a faculty referendum is then taken which needs to pass by majority vote.