On Tuesday, a referendum that would add two questions to the 2025 Student Government Association ballot was approved by the Undergraduate Council of Students.
The revised ballot will ask students to vote on whether the UCS should “organize a general strike of the student body, if at any point, the University decides to comply with the demands of the federal government following the frozen funds” and whether the UCS should “release public statements and organize University-wide actions to assure the Brown administration of the student body’s wholehearted support in the resistance against the federal government's attack on higher education.”
The general election ballot opens April 16 at noon and closes April 21 at noon.
The petition for the referendum collected over 300 signatures, according to Balázs Cserneczky ’28 who organized the petition. He is also running for vice president of the Undergraduate Council of Students.
“I truly believe that this is the time to have this referendum, because we must be anticipating the federal government to send demands,” Cserneczky said in an interview with The Herald.
The questions come in response to President Trump’s actions on higher education, which include plans to freeze $510 million of Brown’s federal funding. After a referendum, the UCS “is responsible to represent those majority sentiments in its future actions,” according to the UCS’s Code of Operations. Referendum questions require a simple majority to pass.
The questions were approved in the morning on April 15. Cserneczky said he had the idea for the referendum last week when was reading through the UCS Constitution to prepare for the election.
Cserneczky presented the petition to the board on April 14, where it was passed by the UCS Executive Board with a two-thirds majority vote.
“We can mobilize the power of UCS as a legitimate representative body of the students to actually organize the students,” he said.
Hadley Carr is a university news editor at The Herald, covering academics & advising and student government.
