Diet
Redirected from: Diet members
Category:Informational -> Government
Note: This entire article is written off the top of Nico’s head. It likely isn’t correct and definitely isn’t complete. Please fix it.
Description
Diet (pronounced /?da??t/, the same as the food regimen) is the student-run governing body of Will Rice College. This is analogous to the Cabinet, Parliament, etc. of other colleges. The term “Diet” in common use is a bit ambiguous: it can be used to refer to Diet meetings, all of the students who attend those meetings, or just the the voting members. Typically Diet meetings are open to everyone, even those from outside Will Rice, and time is given for any announcements at the end of Diet.
Structure
Please expand this section.
The voting members of Diet can be split into three categories: the Executive Council, the Directors, and Representatives. The Executive Council (or EC) is comprised of the President, the Vice President, the Treasurer, and the Secretary. There are four division director: Community, Legacy, Facilities, and Programs. To ensure full representation of Will Rice, there also exist two At Large Representatives, an Off Campus Representative, and a Freshman Representative. Every voting member of Diet is elected by Will Ricers.
The Senator exists in a more gray area within Diet. Although the Senator position is mandated by the Student Association, it is elected by Will Ricers, and the Senator is typically given the floor at every Diet meeting, along with representatives from other university-wide organizations, like RPC. The Senator, however, does not get a vote and essentially holds no power or responsibility within Will Rice government. This is in contrast to some other colleges, where the senator position is almost at the level of the equivalent of EC.
Changeover
Changeover is the time when the government officially transitions from one administration to the next. All government organizations (the colleges and the SA) at Rice perform changeover in the spring semester after elections. Will Rice is typically one of the first organizations to change over, while the Student Association is one of the last.
Changeover is marked by a public celebration where outgoing and incoming office holders drink and gifts from outgoing to incoming are exchanged.
History
Diet, as it exists today, was formed under the presidencies of Roger Sharpe and Rahul Agrawal. Previous systems had no committee chair positions, but instead used regional democracy. That is, there existed “diet reps” from different sections of the college. There were several representatives per floor in old dorm and one per stairwell column in new dorm (‘55). These representatives must be from within their section and were elected by students from that section. This system came under criticism because it was not uncommon for one section of the college to be relatively apathetic with regards to governance, whereas another section would have several motivated individuals, only one of whom could be a representative. A famous example of apathy within a section was the JJ Kim Incident, which became widely cited as a failure of the regional democracy system.