At the time this article was written, Senate has not officially started for the semester. That being said, I predict Wednesday’s meeting will be a productive and enjoyable one. If you bump into me today, ask me how it actually went. This week’s meeting’s purpose was to discuss the new structural changes with Community Senate. Proposals are still due at 5 p.m. on Sundays, but almost everything else has changed.
Once proposals have come to the Steering Committee on Sunday nights, a decision will be made as to where it goes next. If it is a proposal to start a new club or get additional funding for a club it will go to the Inter-Club Council (ICC). All residence hall proposals for funding an event or to discuss a hall issue will go to the Student Residence Hall Council (SRC).
At the weekly ICC Proposal Meeting and bi-weekly SRC meetings, proposals will be heard and decided upon by the two councils. All members of the community can come to these meetings to voice their concerns or support, but the final decision is made by consensus of the council, barring appeals.
The ICC will be made up of:
the ICC chairperson
the Senate Treasurer
the Senate Secretary
the 6 Club Representatives:
Awareness Clubs
Social Clubs
Publications Clubs
Religious Clubs
Athletic Clubs
Educational Clubs
Two Senators At Large
And the SRC will be made up of:
the SRC chairperson
the Senate Business Manager
the Senate Vice President
the nine Residential Hall Representatives:
Apartments North
Apartments South
Alternative houses
Binford hall
Mary Hobbs hall
Milner hall
Bryan hall
Shore hall
English hall
Two Senators At Large
Issues and budgetary concerns larger than either council along with appeals will be brought to the full Senate floor to discuss. This is to open up the Senate time to discuss in greater detail larger issues facing the college.
We are sorry for the inconvenience, but we hope that these changes will facilitate more discussions on issues facing the college more so than has been typical in Senate over the past few years. We want to move away from Senate being simply a bank and instead take real issues head on.
These changes are temporary, in that we will review the process at the end of the semester and then decide if more was accomplished this way. If so, we will move to adopt these changes in our bylaws so that they become regular practice for future years.
Hopefully this will inspire more interest in Senate’s activities by the greater student body encouraging everyone to get more involved. We expect a lot of good debate to come out of these changes and plan on bringing administrators, staff, and faculty to more Senate meetings to discuss things such as the SLRP, Master Planning, college budget process, and more.