The new ASB Constitution and Bylaws were passed by a majority of the student body at the first Congressional Meeting of the school year on Friday, August 23. The new constitution includes changes to in-class ASB operations, the structure of ASB committees, and the roles of the executive cabinet positions.
The revision process started in October 2023 and was finalized by the start of the 2024-25 school year. ASB President Ian Brodie was involved in the year-long revision process along with members of the 2023-24 ASB executive board, which included River Jones, Amanda Balbuena, Christophe Boutellie, and Rohan Melwani.
Brodie said the main priorities of revising the constitution were to align Mountain View High School ASB practices with the California Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team guidelines and set up the structure of ASB to be more productive and better suited to help improve school culture and community.
“I think that there wasn’t a lot of accountability within the old constitution,” Brodie said. “There wasn’t accountability for ASB being productive inside of class with our time. There wasn’t accountability for if our events were meeting student needs.”
To improve this, the ASB class has adopted an A-G course status which has transformed the class to include leadership development training and adopt a set weekly agenda. Brodie said the new constitution also introduces “town halls”, which will be opportunities for students to interact with their class cabinets and provide feedback.
“We’re the elected and appointed officials of the student body who are supposed to be the voice, and if we’re not the voice, then we’re not doing our job,” Brodie said. “So the new constitution will allow us to essentially do our job better.”
Another change at MVHS enacted by the new constitution is the freshmen elections process. In the past, incoming freshmen were asked to apply to ASB prior to the start of the school year, regardless of whether their application was for an elected or appointed position.
“We felt that this wasn’t fair or inclusive to those who didn’t come from feeder schools—that is Graham, Blach, and Crittenden—so we decided to wait until the fall quarter to allow these freshmen to join our class,” Brodie said.
The constitution revised the process to hold freshmen elections and advertise ASB-appointed position applications early in the first semester of the school year.
“I think we’ll have at least one or two freshmen from non-feeder schools, which is a great improvement,” Brodie said. “We’ve almost never had that before. We’re really looking forward to opening up ASB to a wider variety of people to make the student body’s voices heard, rather than just having the same set of seven coming in every year.”
The new ASB constitution has also altered the roles of ASB cabinet positions, including a new joint position of Co-Clubs Commissioner and School Board Representative held by Christophe Bouteille. Brodie said the changes in the constitution have helped clarify his role and duties as ASB President.
“I feel a lot more comfortable in being able to perform my own tasks,” Brodie said. “I feel like I can fulfill my duties a lot better than former members have had the chance to do because they were so stressed worrying about things that have been solved by the Constitution.”
Brodie said that the new constitution “is never going to be perfect,” and that ASB is “taking a chance” with the many changes of the constitution. However, he said that ASB will continue to monitor the constitution’s success in building a positive school culture and adjust accordingly over the years to come.
“I encourage the student body to come out, see our events and participate in them because we truly believe that this is going to be the best year of ASB that we’ve ever had,” Brodie said. “That’s our ambition, and we plan on delivering that.”
