Association of Student Governments President Atul Bhula hopes to gain voting privilege

The president of the UNC Association of Student Governments is pushing for a privilege which many of his predecessors failed to gain.

Atul Bhula, the president of ASG and student member of the UNC-system Board of Governors, is trying to get a vote at board meetings to add a student voice in the decision-making process.

In the past, student members, like Bhula, have been able to speak at the meetings and make motions, but they have not had voting privileges.

Since 1997, most ASG presidents and student members of the board have been fighting to get a vote.

Bhula said he thinks this year it could change.

“The reason that it is most ideal at this point is because Tony Rand is not in office anymore,” Bhula said.

Rand, a former democratic senator in the General Assembly, resigned in December of 2009 from the state legislature.

Bhula said Rand had been an obstacle for the presidents in gaining the voting privilege.

“Within the committee, he killed the bill and tabled previous bills,” he said.

N.C. Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, D-Orange, who has been in the state senate for 14 years, said she has introduced the bill every term since she became senator.

Kinnaird said the bill is important because the board makes decisions that affect students.

A worry for many legislators in the past was that a student vote on the board could create an even number of voting members, which would pose a problem in case of a tie, she said.

Kinnaird said the upcoming November election provides a better chance that a student vote will pass through the legislature.

“They can look at the history, look at the various boards of trustees where students have votes,” she said. “Nothing catastrophic has happened.”

Katie Marshall, student body president at UNC-Greensboro, said the school’s student government is in the process of passing legislation that supports Bhula gaining a vote.

“If all of the UNC-system schools passed legislation, then it would say a lot more than just one school doing it,” Kinnaird said.

While many legislative officials support ASG’s advocacy for getting Bhula a vote, some board members said it won’t do much.

Frank Daniels Jr., a member of the board, said he has never encountered an issue that depended on one vote.

“It won’t make any difference,” Daniels said. “He’s established his ex-officio membership, he has a voice and he can speak.”

Former ASG President Greg Doucette said he was one of the only ASG presidents who didn’t try to gain a vote.

“I didn’t think it was that big of a priority,” Doucette said. “Spending the political capital trying to get a vote is political capital you can use to keep tuition increases down.”

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