This past Sunday the Student Union Senate voted in favor of the Attendance Improvement Act of 2009. This act changes the Student Union bylaws to establish a cap on unexcused senatorial absences from Senate sessions and create a mandatory censure procedure for senators that violate the cap. The Senate was wrong to pass this act. Rather than institute this principally autocratic policy, the Senate should promote democratic principles by updating and easing the current process for a recall election. You could argue that due to Article IV, Section 1 of the Student Union Bylaws, prior to the passage of this act, senators had been required to attend meetings, and by not doing so they were-without even considering principle-liable for censure or impeachment. Executive Senator and Acting Vice President Andrew Brooks '09, who introduced the act to the Senate, pointed out in an interview with the Justice that "if your representative is not there, then you're not being represented." That's true.

However, the Senate cannot determine whether its members are adequately representing their constituencies. Invoking that segment of the bylaws to justify a senatorial censure-or perhaps impeachment-is needlessly undemocratic. With specific regard to attendance, a senator's foremost accountability must be to his or her constituency. We elect our senators. If we feel that our senators are inadequate in their service to us, we-not the Senate-must be the ones to rebuke them. We, the electorate, should remove inadequate senators from the Senate.

And we theoretically have the mechanism to do so: recall elections. Article X, Section 1 of the Student Union Constitution states, "An elected official's constituency shall have the right to recall that official." However, the current recall process is tedious and outdated. The way it stands, there must first be a petition signed in person by at least 15 percent of an elected official's constituency. Using our online UNet accounts to sign such a petition, as is done in an election, would make this outdated process significantly easier, efficient and participatory. The next step of the current recall process, which requires the secretary to validate the petition, would be completed automatically if the petition were completed online through our UNet accounts. Finally, the actual vote for recall, which requires two-thirds of the constituency, is a high yet fair percentage to meet for a recall.

But of course without the proper mechanisms to both notify constituents of poor senatorial attendance and then easily stage a recall election, there is no impetus for the recall process to even begin. Rather than rashly instituting a high-handed attendance policy, the Senate must find ways to keep us informed of our senators' repeated absences and create a more accessible democratic channel for responding to such outright disregard for the duty of representing us in the Senate. There should be a system in place so that as soon as a senator reaches a certain number of absences, constituents are automatically notified of it via e-mail and an online petition is created and accessible through our UNet accounts after a set number of days. Such a system would have a certain level of arbitrariness with regard to the number of absences. But at the point in which that number of absences is reached, the senator would have the opportunity to explain to his or her constituents why he or she missed so many Senate sessions. And if after the explanation more than 15 percent of the constituency still finds a problem with the senator and "votes" in the online petition, then there will be a recall election. I admit that no matter the revisions made to the current process this will take longer than if the Senate simply decided such a thing for us. But that's the cost of a more involved democracy. I think it's an acceptable trade-off.

There's an open secret regarding the act that the Senate just passed. It's very helpful to those that are currently in the Senate and attending the required meetings, more so than to the constituents of absent senators. According to Brooks, "[The current situation] is unfair to the other senators who do step up because it puts more of the workload on them." This may be true. But we must not value the alleviation of some senators' burdens above the right of students to have an elected senator who reflects the wishes of the majority. We have the means for creating a better democracy at our University. I encourage the Senate to be more democratic and creative than this proposed act paints it to be. It's time for some student-not Senate-empowerment.