By Joe Suszczynski
The Student Government Association hosted a guest speaker Wednesday explaining how students can join certain committees on the Faculty Senate.
Frederic Latour, Associate Professor and Secretary of the Faculty Senate, spoke to the SGA about the possible student positions on Faculty Senate Committees.
“The goal of the student seats…first of all we want to get student perspective on those issues that are important to students, but the other thing is that we want to give you a voice because all of those seats come with voting rights,” said Latour.
Some of the committees that students can join are Academic Integrity, Academic Standards, Academic Advising, Curriculum, Library and Student Affairs amongst others.
Senator Shelby Dattilo asked if there were seats that were already full on the committees given.
Latour said that what he had given out to the Senate is what he knows so far and did not have the most current information.
“As far as I know, this is based on the information I have. The only student seat that I was aware would be filled was the one on the University Planning and Budget Committee,” Latour said. The other committees I’m not aware of any seats being taken, but that could be because I don’t have the most current information.”
Later in new business there were recommendations made by Finance Committees.
Senator Kory Mills spoke in favor of this motion, giving a brief summary of each recommendation.
“006 is a fundraising loan, which is pretty awesome. We like fundraising loans. 007 is a new club budget. New club, we generally give them 500 dollars, if you agree say ‘yes’ to that. And then Physical Education line item change, they’re taking money from refreshments to other. It’s always good when they use their food money for other things,” said Mills.
FC13-006 and FC13-007 were motions to allocate money to two clubs, 600 dollars to the Dance Team for t-shirts to be paid back by the end of the semester, Tennis Club being allocated 500 dollars.
FC13-008 was a line item change to the Physical Education Club, moving 50 dollars out of its refreshments budget to its other budget for their “Nitro Ball event.”
The motion passed unanimously.
On open floor, Senator Bobby Berriault suggested to replace any seats that may become vacant throughout the year.
“I wanted to get this out today so we don’t have to have another referendum. I wanted to do this sooner rather than later, to add this to the Constitution so we don’t have to have this problem every semester. It’s unrealistic for us to have an election every two months when a seat becomes vacant and my hope is to get the seats filled,” said Berriault.
Vice President Liz Braun then moved to refer the Senator’s motion to the Internal Affairs Committee.
Braun said it would be better if it were discussed in the committee rather being idle for two weeks.