The second meeting of the quarter for the 17th ASSU Undergraduate Senate took place Tuesday evening. A bill modifying the Senate by-laws regarding time off campus dominated the discussion. ASSU executives John-Lancaster Finley ’16 and Brandon Hill ’16 also proposed the possibility of having John Legend come to campus and sought the support of the Senate in this endeavor.
Hill started the meeting by emphasizing OpenXChange as a cornerstone of this year’s executive agenda.
“John and I just had our ASSU executive cabinet retreat, discussing lots of important issues,” Hill said. “Student engagement and input are the biggest things on our docket.”
Appropriations Committee Chair Justice Tention ’18 discussed the funding for the upcoming events of Full Moon on the Quad on Oct. 22 and Mausoleum on Oct. 30. Communications Committee Chair Eni Asembio ’18 introduced the redesign of the website.
“We want to do a complete overhaul of the old system and it will be a long term project,” Asembio said. “Some of the key features we want to include are a live feed of everything that we are doing and some kind of feedback mechanism where people can input feedback and petitions.”
Bills to modify bylaws
The Senate then delved into discussing bills to modify the undergraduate senate bylaws. The first proposed bill dealt with cleaning up outdated bylaws, updating job and committee descriptions and having the secretary of the senate keep a detailed record of each senator’s voting. The latter proposition incited debate amongst senate members.
“I think it would disproportionately affect those who vote against the status quo,” Advocacy Committee Chair Gabe Knight ’17 said. “It’s much easier to vote for what we stood for in the election if we know that we can vote without feeling pressure from people, both in the future and in the present.”
Other members argued for the importance of transparency.
“I really think this is something that we should put on the website where it is readily accessible,” Administration and Rules Committee Chair Matthew Cohen ’18 said. “This is the only elected institution I know where votes are not recorded.”
“I think if you were comfortable enough to have your faces in peoples bathrooms, you should be comfortable enough to have your face attached to the decisions you make,” said Finley. “I think we would lose accountability as student government if names were not attached to the things we do.”
The Senate will vote on this bill in its next meeting. The second bill that the Senate discussed dealt with time off campus for Senate members. This bill proposed to amend the bylaws because current bylaws only address Senators that are abroad rather than taking time off. Addressing this issue is particularly relevant given Hattie Gawande’s ’18 absence from school this quarter.
“We are in violation of some of the bylaws right now; we should change the bylaws to make sure we are in accordance with them,” Cohen said. “Two-thirds of the Senate has to vote in favor to expel a Senator.”
However, another bylaw established a contradictory clause that Senators who take a leave of absence are expelled. The motion to expel Gawande did not pass, as it lacked the necessary two-thirds vote.
“Next week we are voting on both the bills, the first bill that discusses the bylaws in general and the second one that discusses time off campus policies,” Cohen said. “Regardless, Hattie is still a Senator.”
In addition, the Senate will be voting to remove the bylaw that states that taking a leave of absence results automatically in a senator’s expulsion.
“It’s already in the by-law that you cannot expel anyone without voting, so we have to clear up this contradiction,” Cohen said.
Future events
Finley addressed the Senate, asking for $30,000 from their standard grant pool to fund a $125,000 offer to John Legend for the possibility of him engaging with students in a conversation about civil rights, diversity and inclusion, as well as a concert following this lecture.
Contact Pallavi Krishnarao at pallavik ‘at’ stanford.edu.