Revised districting plan approved by Congress

Correciton (November 17, 2010): Due to a reporting error, a previous version of this story incorrectly stated the number of districts reserved for graduate students. Three districts are reserved. The story has been updated to reflect the correction. The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for the error.

A bill proposed to realign Student Congress seats passed at Tuesday night’s Student Congress meeting.

The bill, which was sponsored by Speaker Deanna Santoro, will change districts so each member of Student Congress will represent about the same number of students. Districts will now be divided into four geographic sections, along with an at-large district for freshmen and three districts reserved for graduate students.

District 1 will include residence halls north of South Road; district 2 will include the Odum and Ram Village communities, Baity Hill and dormitories south of Manning Drive; and District 3 will include residence halls between South Road and Manning Drive. District 4 comprises Greek and off-campus housing.

The bill passed with a vote of 20-10 with 1 abstaining. Some dissenters wanted to table the bill for further discussion.

In her appeal for passage, Santoro said the current system does not equally represent students. With her bill, Santoro said there would be more competition between districts.

But not all students were pleased with the changes.

Residence Hall Association President Ryan Collins said he was concerned about the bill’s representation of on-campus students.

“I did not see it as practical in any stance,” he said, of the bill’s original form.

Collins said he did not agree with the new districts, adding he did not feel comfortable with the extension of the section most know as middle campus. Collins said he was also disconcerted with breaking up residence halls, such as Hardin and Koury, from their respective communities.

“The way that you increase competition is to get people interested themselves,” Collins said. “This arbitrary competition is going to cause more problems than it is going to solve.”

Santoro responded to Collins’ critical letter to the editor printed in the Monday issue of The Daily Tar Heel by saying he has voiced his concerns over the bill before, and that each of his concerns has been addressed.

“Our districts in the bill do not say north, mid or off-campus,” Santoro said. “It makes it easier for candidates to go door-to-door geographically. In order to make the seats even, that’s the way we had to do it.

“Hogan came to one of our meetings and said he wanted us to move away from north, south, mid-campus. It ostracizes south campus.”

Santoro said the goal of Congress was not to maintain community districts. She continued, stating the interests of the RHA did not align with the interests of Congress in this case.

Student Congress member A.J. Horowitz proposed the possibility of creating districts based on class. The amendment was not added, but there was discussion of it being proposed in committee at a later time. Baity Hill was included in District 2 as part of an amendment.

Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.