LSU student body ratifies Raby's constitutional spending amendment
LSU students ratify the amendment Raby co-wrote requiring a two-thirds Senate vote to spend student fees, weeks after the Senate overrode a veto of it.
BATON ROUGE, La. · LSU students ratified a constitutional amendment co-written by Colin Raby on Nov. 10, 2021, in Student Government's fall election, requiring a two-thirds vote of the Student Senate, not a simple majority, to make appropriations and pass the Student Government budget.Ballots were open on TigerLink from midnight to 11:59 p.m. that Wednesday, Student Government's elections page said.
Raby, then vice chair of the Senate's Budget and Appropriations Committee, co-wrote the bill, S.G.B. 3, with Sens. Taylor Perrodin, Matthew McClure, Harris Quadir and Miles McLendon of the Fifty-Fourth Student Senate. It changed a single clause, Article I, Section 7, Clause 3, from "majority present and voting" to "two-thirds present and voting." Speaker Alexandra Basse signed it on Oct. 1, 2021, and Student Body President Javin Bowman vetoed it. On Oct. 6, the Senate overrode the veto.The enrolled bill on LSU's Digital Commons carries the veto stamp and, in marker, "Overturned," dated Oct. 6, 2021.
A companion resolution, S.G.C.R. 34, put the question to students: "An amendment to change the voting required to make appropriations from majority to two-thirds has been proposed. Shall this proposed amendment be ratified and brought into effect?" On election day Raby, running for another Senate term on the Amplify ticket, urged LSU voters who wanted to "hold Senate more accountable for spreading the money we collect" to vote yes.From the graphic in his election-day post on Instagram, Nov. 10, 2021.
Students approved it. Certified Nov. 15, it became the First Amendment to the Constitution of the Student Government of Louisiana State University.The amendment's own text records the vote, "done on the tenth day of November" and certified five days later, in the Constitution the University Court publishes.
The rule soon bound Raby's own work. As chair of the Budget and Appropriations Committee, he wrote the 2022–23 budget, which needed two-thirds of the Senate and passed 40 to 2.He walked students through the two-thirds rule before that vote in "Student Government members, adviser explain finances ahead of Senate budget vote," by Corbin Ross, The Reveille, Sept. 15, 2022.
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