Senate reconvenes

Student senators pass outreach program and amend proposals

The Senate enjoyed its last meeting so much that it let it go on for an extra hour. Senator senior Dan Persky said, "It was our longest and maybe our most productive meeting."

An outreach program, the Advisory Councils and a new attendance policy were the main issues debated over the course of the four hour meeting last Sunday.

After extensive debate and amendments, the Senate unanimously passed a proposed Communications/Education/Outreach program. The program, dubbed CEO in the course of the debate, was proposed by Persky. "It's supposed to get us away from the image of Big Brother," Persky said.

Part of the proposal was to have Comment/Problem cards available throughout campus for students to voice concerns to the Senate. "This is sort of a much stolen and plagiarized idea," said Persky.

Persky accepted a friendly amendment to extend the original proposed response time by one day to three days and to have two senators instead of one answer each card.

Another amendment changed the original plan to have a senator attend one meeting of each student organization before the end of the semester. Instead Senate would ask each student organization if they wanted to have a meeting with a student senator.

Senator senior Joshua Kaye commented on the amendment, saying, "Yes, ask, but ask aggressively."

Two amendments proposed by senator senior Chapin Benninghoff were passed and incorporated into the proposal. The first cut out a proposed poster campaign with the theme "Working With You," and the other reworded the proposal so that the hours senators spent tabling could not be counted to the required number of weekly office hours.

Effective implementation of the proposal was a concern. Senator junior Meagan Willits said of a possible botched job, "It may add to the impression that the student body has that we don't do shit."

Discussion over what members of the Advisory Council should be required to attend the general faculty meeting and which members should be invited resulted in a debate over the entire institution of the Advisory Councils.

It was generally agreed that only the Health Plan committee had lived up to its potential and that the Senate had been slow to set them up. "Whatever malaise we have now is a function of our lag," Kaye said.

The nature and purpose of the Senator sophomore Sarah Stein Greenberg.

"These are suppose to be flexible things," said Benninghoff.

Senator sophomore Nathaniel Stankard agreed. "If purple elephants in the classrooms became an issue, we could form an advisory council on purple elephants," he said.

The name of the Academic Issues committee was changed to Academic Support, partly in response to the current campus debate about retention issues. "It sounds more attractive," Kaye said.

The Senate's past record of lax attendance underlay the discussion of a proposed new attendance policy. Publicizing the attendance record was thought by some to ensure Senate accountability to the student body. "There would be a public outcry," said Kaye, "if the Senate did not expel members with bad attendance records."

Benninghoff disagreed, noting that in the past when the records were publicized, lax attendance still occurred. "I fully trust this Senate to behave maturely," said Benninghoff, but added that he wanted the new policy to ensure that future Senates would.