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A View from the Solarium RETRACTION: There are many things to consider about Mr Smith: Please go to the high school tommorow at midnight. We'll give you the girl if you give us the dough. Sincerly, - Sir Beldomar PS: We hacked this secret message into this psycho kid's web page 'retractions' to ensure secrecy. Only your eyes will see this. Goodbye. this essay. Many things. By the way, we'd prefer twenties but if that's not plausible that's okay. Try to be there because we're running out of ways to threaten the girl. Many many things.

            To gain an understanding of this article, you must first understand what exactly I mean by "The CPA Constitution". For that matter, there really isn't one. If there really was, it would look something like this:

ARTICLE 1 - Name:
The name of this organization shall be "Charles Pillsbury Allen High School"; hereafter referred to as CPA.

ARTICLE 2 - Objective:
The purpose of CPA is to educate... <yazza, yazza, yazza> ... learning environment.

ARTICLE 3 - Leadership:
Mr. Ray Whitman is in charge.

            ... and this constitution would be very broad and would have many applications! Every time a CPA student or teacher had an issue about a new regulation, and maybe they say that it is 'unconstitutional', so they'll look it up, and if Mr. Whitman passed the regulation, end of story. It's one of those simple, clear-cut things.
            But the Students' Council Constitution is a different matter all together, all through its sixteen articles and countless subsections. I stayed up until 0230h this morning trying to decipher it, and now I think we should get into discussions about constitutional reform. Read these excerpts and my comments, and you'll see why! NOTE: All lines of the constitution reprinted here appear exactly as they do in the original document. Any spelling mistakes, improper colon (:) conventions, odd numbering schemes, are someone else's fault!

ARTICLE 5 - Duties of the Executive:
5.1 - President
j)        To ensure that all team, club, and organization members within the school have purchased a valid student I.D.
I honestly don't agree with the directive that people who didn't buy an ID from us should be left out of these institutions. But I can tell you that this one has been steered around. I know many people on clubs and things who do not purchase student IDs, and to my knowledge they haven't been removed from their organizations. (I helped sort the ID's this year.)

5.3 - Treasurer
a)        To present all financial matters to the Cabinet.
What?! She never says a bloody word!! I, a member of this Council, have absolutely no idea how our finances are going, and we're heading into November!!

f)        To present a complete financial report to the Council once a month.
Pppfffttt! Right! September - NO report. October - NO report. November... ???

ARTICLE 7 - Duties of the Staff Advisor:
7.3        To instruct the chairperson in the rules of Parliamentary procedure.
Go to one of our meetings at 0745h on Tuesday mornings, and you'll see why 7.3 is a major gaffe indeed. Half the Council probably doesn't know what 'parliament' means!

9.8        To approve the amendments of the constitution.
Uh... TOO MUCH POWER!!

ARTICLE 9 - Meetings
9.2        Meetings shall be open to any member of the student body, except when there are "close door" discussions.
Aside from Student of the Week (secret knowledge!! hahahaha), we don't have "close door" discussions. And I have serious hang-ups about going ANY FURTHER with this. We might start having meetings to impeach people! And we don't want THAT, do we Jer? Jer? Stop saying 'we do', Jer!!

9.4        All items dealt with at each meeting must take the form of a motion.
They never do. Never ever.

9.7        Both the treasurers' report and the minutes from the previous meeting should be read.
A - We never had a treasurers' report yet. B - Does frantically passing out sheets at the beginning of the meeting qualify as 'read'?!

ARTICLE 10 - Voting:
10.3        The Staff Advisor shall be regarded as an ex-officio†. He/she in consultation with the Principal shall approve all motions passed by cabinet.
^† By virtue of the office held. That says little, yet it says a lot. But it's vague little lines like this in the Constitution that scare me.

ARTICLE 11 - Election:
11.3        The election of the President, Vice-President, Treasurer, and Secretary will be held 1 week before the election of the Grade Eleven and Grade Twelve Representatives both elections to be held before the 25th day of May of the school year prior to taking office.
Last year's election of the grade reps was delayed for longer than a week, and the results of the G10 rep elections were REALLY late getting into CPA. (I don't even want to get into how hard it was for me to obtain the candidates and results for my Election '98 Log. Ms. MacKenzie kept asking me 'why do you need this? why do you need to know that?', even though she had...

11.9a)        To prepare a list of candidates.
and...

11.9f)        To determine the results of the elections and announce the winners within one day of the voting.
Hmm... I seem to vividly remember not getting some of those results until June 4th!!

ARTICLE 13 - Performance Check
13.2        Any member of the Cabinet may be removed from his/her position by the Principal in consultation with the staff advisor if his\her performance or behavior is unsatisfactory during their time of office.
I think that this is an important rule, but I think we should have had impeachment votes for people who were on their way out (ie: Scott Gibb, Tim Holland from last year). That's always fun.

ARTICLE 14 - Finances
14.1        No committee, group, club or individual within the school shall embark upon any money raising projects without the permission of the Cabinet.
We have too much power over this sort of thing.

14.5        Organizations shall be encouraged to raise their own funds if possible and if Cabinet gives permission.
Okay, so if they're going to raise their own funds, then why are we here?

14.7        School dances are the sole monopoly of the Students' Council.
This was violated on the last two dances... Jer took a hissy fit when he found out that the Yearbook people were selling popsicles. Actually, I wish that they had not been permitted to sell at the Halloween dance, selling the Council's soda next to Greg Baker in drag was just AWFUL. I mean, if you're going to dress up in drag, you can at least shave your arms!!

14.8        The sale of student I.D. cards. Any students who have not paid a student fee will not be able to participate in any organization which is sponsored or subsidized by the Students' Council.
Going back to what I said in section 5.1j), I think that this rule is grossly unfair. Does this mean if I didn't buy an ID card, I wouldn't be able to help out the Yearbook or Pickle Jar?! Think about it... I don't like it a bit.

ARTICLE 15 - Amendments to Constitution
15.1        The constitution shall be reviewed by the Cabinet Members at their discretion. Any amendments to the constitution must have the approval of the Staff Advisor, Principal, and two-thirds of the Students' Council.
So this is how we change things, if need be present.

            Thus before you lies an excerpt of our Constitution. Do with it what you will. Just keep in mind that for the elections next May, any candidates had best keep this thing in mind before diving in! It's a scary world, Council is!

Regards,
- Will

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