A new member of College Park’s City Council wants to explore the possibility of giving University of Maryland students a vote on the council.
The council has a nonvoting student liaison, established via resolution several years ago.
“I’m not sure why they don’t give the students a vote,” City Council Member Mary Cook told The Examiner. “Maybe it’s something legal. I don’t know.”
Students of the College Park campus account for approxi-
mately 18,000 of the city’s nearly 26,000 residents, according to a city planner.
Cook included the creation of a Students’ Concerns Committee on her council wish list for 2007-08 that would include six to 10 students, rather than the single liaison.
“What I had kind of thought of was they could be nominated from different organizations across the campus,” said Cook, who joined the council after winning a special election in January. “I guess they would have to be vetted by the council the way we do the liaison, but I just thought that more students would have a voice in that way.”
Issues such as establishing the committee and giving either the committee or the existing liaison a vote need further thought, Cook said, and she plans to discuss the ideas with students and her council colleagues.
Cook said she wasn’t sure exactly how the system would work with a student vote. There are eight council members, two from each district, and the mayor’s vote break ties.
Jesse Blitzstein, the student liaison, said, “in theory … it would be great to have a vote.”
Blitzstein, a senior, said he would like to hear more about Cook’s committee idea, but wouldn’t support it if students or a student didn’t have access to all council meetings and executive sessions.
Nick Aragon, also a senior, ran against Cook in the special election. He doesn’t support replacing the student liaison with a committee and giving students a council vote.
As for giving students a council vote, Aragon said, it would take a “fair system and almost turn it upside down.”
