After months of debate, the Student Assembly yesterday passed the “community clause” — the resolution that allows all undergraduates currently enrolled as students at Cornell to vote on certain matters at Student Assembly meetings. Resolution 11, or “Voting Rights for Members of the Undergraduate Student Community” as the Community Clause is formally titled, squeaked by on a 16-5 vote, barely garnering the two-thirds majority needed to pass.

As a result of the many changes the resolution has undergone over the past two semesters, the version of the resolution that ultimately passed has informally been referred to as “The Community Clause 2.0”. Originally the community clause was proposed with the intention of allowing one vote per student, but the final version of the resolution allows for a total of two votes allotted cumulatively to all eligible community members present.

“Initially I wanted one person one vote but that’s too radical,” said S.A. president Rammy Salem ‘10.

S.A. vice president for finance Chris Basil ‘11 concurred: “In the beginning this resolution was looking to put one vote to one person. We were actually trying to empower students to affect legislation and we ended up deciding that was too much power.” Get your hands up: The Student Assembly passes a resolution that allows the student body to vote in S.A. meetings.

In order to prevent large groups of students from arriving in mass to vote on issues that directly affect individual or groups they represent or belong to — and thus unfairly affecting the final vote — the S.A. decided to allot only two votes to the community as a whole, although over the past few months a number of other alternatives were considered to address this eventuality as well.

For most of this semester, the version of the community clause on the table required that students attend three S.A. meetings before becoming eligible to vote. This requirement, however, was removed just minutes before yesterday’s final vote on the resolution.

“The three meeting attendance requirement was originally in place when it was one person one vote, but now that it’s for a collective two votes [for the community as a whole].”Salem said, “I think that we should remove the attendance requirement because otherwise I think people will think, ‘What’s the point?’”

A number of representatives took issue with various details of the process, such as how the votes would be counted, how voting eligibility would be determined, whether a simple majority would win both community votes and when the community’s voting results would be announced.

Salem explained the basics of how the process would work: “The parliamentarian would go through the gallery and check the names and ID cards of all the students and then go back [to his seat and] check online that all [potential voters] are current registered students. Then he would collect the votes and a simple majority wins [both votes].” Thus the two votes would not be split, but rather both would concur with the simple majority opinion.

The parliamentarian would use Cornell’s online resources to check student status and thus voting eligibility. There was not, however, a specific decision regarding the manner in which the votes would be collected, though many S.A. members felt that the parliamentarian would be able to handle the issue competently.

“Obviously this is all in our heads now I think it will evolve as a process when we actually see it being played out,”Salem said.

Also, in order to avoid giving students too much power, the S.A. decided to limit the types of matters upon which the community is allowed to vote. As stated in Resolution 11: “The community clause may only be exercised on final votes of sense-of-the-body resolutions ... which excludes funding and budgetary decisions, amendments to the S.A. Charter and Standing Rules, the ability to make motions, the creation / dissolution of committees, selection of officers, committee members, and liaisons from the popularly elected S.A.”

Despite these limitations, many S.A. members were pleased with the resolution.

“I’m in full support of this resolution,”said S.A. member Adam Nicoletti ’12. “It creates an easier space for a full campus dialogue to happen and also this shows the power of a campus dialogue, as this resolution emerged out of one. I think this is a landmark resolution.”

In addition to the community clause, the S.A. also passed a handful of housing resolutions at yesterday’s meeting. Resolutions 12, 13 and 15 allowed for the restructuring of the general housing lottery system, the creation of two student position on the committee responsible for hiring Resident Housing Directors and the creation of in-house housing lottery systems in the Collegetown dorms like those on West Campus. All three resolutions passed easily with little discussion and strong support.