Senate Meeting Agenda for April 7, 2005

Meeting called to order at 7:32pm.

Oath of Office to elected senators

All At-large and Academic Senator who were elected stood: Repeated the pledge as stated by Michael Bumbry

Minutes from March 10, 2005 Jon Chuk – moved to skip So moved

Presentation – Darris Means

Darris:

Hi everyone. My name is Darris Means and I am a senior. I was on SGA for 4 years and Michael wanted me to share some words with you all about my experience. I had the opportunity to come to my first meeting at the beginning of my freshman year and I fell in love with SGA for all four of my years. I thought it was weird that Mike wanted me to come instead of a former exec, but I realized the important thing is that leadership isn’t about who is the loudest or takes on the biggest roles, but it is working with a group of people to better the school Top 5 list: 5. Do not take things too personally. There are a lot of debates, but always remember that we are here to represent other people, not yourself 4. Have fun. A lot of these people will become some of your closest friends. These people are the people I will call whenever I need anything. 3. Learn from other leaders. This room has some of the best leaders on this campus. These leaders have taught me to never settle for less then the best. These people taught me to stay calm, have fun, and take things seriously at times. 2. Make the most out of your role on SGA. It doesn’t matter if you are an exec, committee chair, or a senator, but create a vision for your position and get out there. 1. Remember who you are representing when you vote. When you come into this room you are not a member of a fraternity, or another organization. Make sure you remember that when you walk in this room and leave your biases at the door.

I’m going to miss this experience, but I want to thank you all for having me come to speak.

Open Forum

Bethany - Explains Open Forum, asks for Open forum announcements. - Well, glad to see all of you, I’m so excited about this new year, and all of the new senators.

Advisor Report – Dean Patterson

Dean P: report skipped for the moment. Executive Reports

Secretary – Maggie Piggott

I am Maggie Piggott, new exec secretary. Senators have 1 office hours a week, it is your time to do SGA work, answer phones, etc, but it’ll be a good time for committees once assigned. I am sending around a sign up sheet for office hours. In the office you will find the office hours binder and make sure you sign it when you are in the office.

Housekeeping – please try to keep the office clean, its clean now, and let’s try to keep it clean because it is our space.

Contact information sheet is going around, please sign up.

You all will receive binders hopefully by next week. It’ll have constitution, bylaws, and a sheet on the expectations of Senators.

If you are ever going to miss a meeting please email [email protected]. We also are going to set up [email protected]. So that announcements will be more effective, so that I can make sure I have the right info.

As exec secretary, I am in charge of homecoming…and also in charge of those duties that come along with Homecoming.

Yield to queries: Latoya: How important are office hours? Should I come right my name and leave? Maggie: No, it’s your time to do work. You can reach out to constituents that come in, but please always stay and log it in.

Yield to chair

Treasurer – Cameron Davis

I’m Cameron Davis, I am the exec Treasurer. I have to submit a budget, have the state of the treasury report, administer all SGA activities fees for all organizations; I keep all of the monies for SGA, and administrate the student loan program. The four class treasurers make up the finance committee, and the treasurer’s manual will be discussed later in the meeting tonight. The SGA accounts will close Friday May 6, 2005. All check requests need to be processed after that date. Please pass that on to your orgs – Also, please tell your organizations that we cannot process requests without receipts. We are not allowed to do that. Please remind people that we need receipts to give money, and your social security number.

Yield to chair

Vice President – Bethany Massman

Hello! Basically this is my biggest responsibility right now running meetings, and overseeing committees. These committees are finance, elections, judicial, special events, judicial, and homecoming. Please indicate your top two choices, and if you want to be a committee chair. Also, I’m going to pass around a senate cheat sheet to help everyone through the first few meetings. Hopefully this will help as you come into meetings. I’d also like to remind you of two dates – April 21st – from 6-7 we are going to be having “What’s the Scoop with SGA” it is an outreach event for our constituents, and that’s when they can come see us. We will be serving ice cream and snow cones. Also, September 23rd and 24th will be the senate retreat. It will be one overnight, and this date needs to be kept open. We know there are always some issues with attendance, but this is required. This helps us bond as a Senate.

I yield to quiries Jason – What are the committees again? Bethany – Elections – They run elections Student Issues – a very important committee – reaches out to the students Special events – in charge of OAIC and the reception at Dr. Lamberts Latoya – I am a Jr. can I chair the elections committee?

Bethany – No, that must be a senior. This is to help to make sure that they are not running in the elections that they are monitoring

Judicial – oversee attendance, dress code, - and as a reminder, you get 3 absences per year- after the third you go before the judicial committee and explain why you missed meetings.

PR – involved in getting our name out there – pr from homecoming to elections to OAIC

Homecoming – plans homecoming – right away you will be on the committee

President – Michael Bumbry

Welcome everyone! I get to chair the exec council, appoint students to the campus committees, and meet with the cabinet to check on their progress, I am the student representative to their schools, and also have other responsibilities that come up. I want to go ahead with a few things. This is a very important organization – every one of you has done something to get you here. Bring these experiences forward to the table, and we want to make this year as interactive and as hands on as possible – one of the reasons why we are doing scoops again. We really want to increase PR. Some of our main concerns that we are hearing is that people don’t know what we do – we all need to work on wearing our buttons and shirts, and make sure you talk to your constituents all the time, in and out of your office hours. Homecoming this year is one of the most important committees – it is a great committee, and you guys bond over that time together. It is a great committee. Stay involved with SGA throughout the entire term – please keep it going throughout the year – there is plenty to do! Also this week we have been working to find members to fill the empty seats.

Oath of Office of Organization Council and all appointed senators

Executive Duty #1

Bethany – To explain – elected members who have been sworn in have to approve these members At Large Council First Is there a motion on the floor? James Cobler – move to accept Seconded Accepted

Academic council

Is there a motion on the floor? Jon Chuk – move to accept Seconded – Clearly Passes

Mike – reads the pledge

Class Reports Senior Class – Jason Pressberg – I have already started discussing Acorn Society ideas with Dave Warfel, ready to start working on that. Yeild to the chair Junior Class – Carson Fushee Hello everybody. I am Carson, and here are your Junior class officers – Don’t be scared to get to know us – we are already started with Acorn Society and are excited too. Sophomore Class – Cassie Hickey We are also working with the Acorn Society and we are excited about bringing up the total and giving out gifts. Please encourage your constituents to participate. Freshman Class - no report

Council Reports At-Large – no report Academic – no report Organization –no report

Committee Reports Homecoming – no report Finance – no report Elections – no report Student Issues – no report Special Events – no report Judicial – no report Public Relations – no report

Executive Cabinet Report – Chief of Staff – no report

Old Business – none

New Business - Senate Rules and Bylaws (Executive Vice President)

Presented by Bethany

This is the bill to amend the bylaws. It states the changes I have made. These bylaws saw a huge overhaul this past year, and this has made my job quite easy. I want to point out that everything underlined is what is being changed, with the first being under the Homecoming section. We have decided to change the fact that the homecoming packet should be approved at least a month before the date of homecoming, as opposed to the first meeting. Next is with the at-large council. We wanted to make sure that the liaisons were efficient. We wanted to help you all in helping to select the council liaisons. We also saw a major change with the executive cab. We decided as an executive to have them no longer meet bi-weekly, but rather once a month. We then assigned members of the cabinet to an executive member. Each executive cabinet member will meet with an exec to help their job along; they will be required to meet at least once a month. Also, under elections rules we changed the number of signatures required for an exec position from 200 signatures to 125. We thought that by dropping the number we could raise competition for these slots. We no longer want to see uncontested elections. We would have loved to have someone run against us, and we are trying to foster more competition. Under vote counting we had to do away with paper ballots, but if we ever have to resort to a paper ballot, we added that in the event of a paper ballot, they wouldn’t be opened until the specific time and by the right people. Finally we cut down the academic seat on the org council from two seats to one. We added the clause under the athletic seat that the athletic chair should be held by a varsity athlete. We also added an Elon Thon seat, because they are now a recognized organization and they need a voice on this Senate. Finally under the Academic council we added an International Seat. We decided that this seat would benefit the Senate and Elon.

Carson – Can you explain the actions under elections part?

Bethany – For example you see someone who is breaking the elections rules. If someone were to witness a violation you would have to submit a complaint in writing within 24 hours in order for us to take action on it.

Geoff – Not to belittle the organization but I am confused by Elon Thon gets its own seat.

Bethany – It was partly due to the problem they had with funding. Before last year thon was not a recognized program through the university, and had no representation on the Senate. We told them when they were looking for money that they must become a program for us to do that. It seemed only fair that for a program like this to have to go and make itself a program and receive funding through budget hearings. Now they are and they can have a seat.

Geoff – But my question is why aren’t there seats for all other things?

Bethany – Because it is its own separate program. There is no other organization for them to fall under. It does not fall under a cluster.

Kate – Since it is a service organization, couldn’t they fall under service?

Bethany – Service represents the service organizations, and Thon is not a service organization. They also do not fall under the Greek Life seats. We had to make them a separate program and seat.

Karen Baum – What is programming then and why aren’t they under programming?

Bethany – Programming deals with SUB and other student activities. A program and programming is separate.

Yield to Cameron – It is a program – it is not an organization. It does not fall under a cluster. It is CLOD, Res life, Thon, and Campus Rec. It does not fall under a programming seat, and can’t fall under there since it is not an org.

John – Has anyone from Thon come forward?

Bethany – No they have not

Mike – We had a lot last year that were involved with it and it was their recommendation and we felt that it was important for them to have their spot. James – Is club sports an organization or a program?

Bethany – It is technically a program

James – That means that Elon thon could fall under something else

Gibby – Campus Rec and club sports is different – as it falls under campus Rec we head it up but it is its own program

James – I am trying to reason why we are giving this seat to Thon – especially with no one coming forward.

Steve – We are arguing about semantics – the Res life seat represents thousands of people – a thon seat would represent about 20 people who work year round.

Bethany – Right now we are only entertaining questions – we will open for discussion later

Rachael – If we do it for a year and don’t like it could it change next year?

Bethany – Yes, the next VP could do that

Hannah – You said that the main issue was that they couldn’t get money, but now they are a program, and can go to budget hearings, so they do have a voice.

Bethany – For example, the service seat represents the service organizations having a voice. We are trying to give them representation in SGA. There is a possibility that we might have people to come in to dissolve thon, technically speaking, no one would be able to speak for them. The justification is that they need a voice. If they are a member of this community then they should be allowed to have a voice.

Jon – Looking at the revised structure – numbers 1-9 are not programs. The others are. Could we add a university programs seat – much like media has two people.

Bethany –It’s hard to lump them together b/c they are different.

Cassie – Our purpose here is to help people have their voices heard, and we need to remember that.

Bethany – Do I have a motion?

Rachael – I move to go into discussion for 5 min. Second One Nay – Steve Sypole

Racheal – I think that since we can change it if we want – this person could do a lot for SGA in general – it could be a trial period.

Gibby – As a senate – we represent all of the students at Elon – right now Thon has no representation because it doesn’t fall anywhere else. If we vote to not have Elon thon as a seat, then they won’t have a voice. Lots of students participate in that program, and it needs a voice.

David – You can’t put thon under an organization cluster because they don’t have bylaws and a constitution, so they can’t be an organization. So they must remain as a program. Cassie – I don’t understand why we are being defensive about this because it affects lots of people on this campus, and we need to give these people a voice.

Steve – I have nothing to add that I haven’t already said.

Kiley – I guess people had talked about putting it under other places, but I don’t see why we shouldn’t do this – we don’t need to group programs together and mess up their system.

Kate – If that became a seat I know that they don’t have a voice to be heard, but cant they come during open forum and I don’t think that the majority of the meetings they will have enough to say during the year, only during thon time, so maybe they should come during open forum.

Hannah – I’m going with Kate, they haven’t approached us, and should go before open forum.

Jon – if you get money from SGA you get representation on SGA correct?

Cameron – Correct.

Karen – What about adding a University Programs seat? They don’t have to mess with the programs that are already in there, but as other programs are added they can go there also.

Steve – Motion to extend speaking time for 5 min

Rachael – Is it possible that they didn’t know that they could ask for a seat? Maybe they didn’t know about it.

Cameron – Point of information – none of the orgs ask for a seat. If you get recognized, you automatically get a seat on the Senate. It’s just that Thon got recognized, and there was no place to put them. They deserve a seat on the senate – we asked them to become a program and they did. They therefore deserve a seat.

Carson – I have just never seen Thon as equal to athletics. I think a Thon seat would be a mistake, and I would go for a university programs seat. When you compare it to the others, it’s not the same.

Jason – I think that the amount of people they represent shouldn’t be the problem, but I can at least think of one other program that does not come under a seat already. It might be complicated, but I think that would be a better fit.

Steve – Point of inquiry – Did we address why they couldn’t be represented under Greek life?

Bethany – Those seats represent the councils. It does not fit under those seats.

Caitlin – If adding a seat for Thon – what is the benefit for them?

Cameron – It is because they went through the proper channels to become recognized, its not that they will benefit, but they will get a seat. When we are discussing issues, and doing business, right now they have no voice. No one on this senate could speak for them.

Speaking time expired.

Jon – extended by 10 min Second Nays have it

Jon – extend by 5 min Karen – If you want to change the name of it what is the process of it? Just change the name of the seat.

Bethany – You would have to come up with a friendly amendment.

Jon – I want to make some points. This group has 50 some recognized seats that have votes. Personally I have a problem with one chair for thon having one vote, where 2 communications seats have to deal with one thousand students. If communications were to add a concentration, they would fall under us, not get a new seat. I have a problem where I see performance having one chair and serve many other organizations, and having a small voice, and seeing Thon having a vote for 20 people. I think it is a matter of fairness. We need to look at the ratio of representatives to student

James – This is something Mike and I talked about earlier in the year. With Res life being represented by a RSA member….

Bethany – It can be anyone under the Res life office. – Not just RSA.

James – Does the person representing Res life have to be under the Res life office?

Bethany – It has to be someone who works in Res life.

Mike – We don’t appoint organization members – the organizations themselves do.

Rachael – When we go to vote if we don’t pass it that means the whole thing doesn’t go through?

Bethany – Yes – and we have to pass the bylaws.

Speaking time has expired

Gibby – moving to extend 5 min Hand vote – Ayes – 9 Nays – 15

Speaking time will not be extended.

Bethany – What I would suggest is that someone make a friendly amendment

Gibby – If we do not approve Thon as a seat on the org council where would it go?

Bethany – Right now as it stands it would fall under programs and would have no representation.

Karen – Point of inquiry – for the academic seat – so the academic council does not represent the honors?

Bethany – No

Cassie – If we don’t approve it there will no longer be a thon seat?

Tyler – So thon will have no representation unless we create a place.

Bethany – Yes.

Jon -Move to table this till next week. Bethany – We cannot do that because we have to pass the bylaws at the first meeting.

Tyler motion to reopen the floor Ayes have it

Tyler – motion to limit to 5 minutes Ayes have it

Geoff – When I brought up this question it was because I didn’t understand and didn’t have the charts. The point Jon made about equity was a good one. I didn’t understand the distinction between a program and an organization. I didn’t understand why they would get individual representation. Looking at the flowchart – it is a program. It is entitled to the same representation – it was just a question but it is a question of equity, and the problem is that we might not find a good solution, and we can have a House of Reps and a Senate, but they are entitled to representation.

Rachael – It is still a new program and it is just a year, if it’s bad we can take it away. It would be worse for them to not have a voice. I think it would be good to let them have it.

Steve – If they had come to ask for their own seat, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.

Caitlin – I disagree with that point because no other program has asked for a seat either. It is a valuable program and deserves a voice

David – I have a question about Greek life – right now do all of the seats come from the councils?

Bethany – Yes.

James – If we chose not to grant them their seat I think it becomes the execs jobs to find a way for them to fall under the other organizations so they are represented.

Valronica – I wanted to agree with Cameron. The process of getting recognized is very difficult because there are so many different programs everyday, and if they got recognized, then they deserve a seat.

Mike – To answer what James said we can’t just throw them anywhere.

Cassie – move to vote on the bylaws as is Second Nays have it

Bethany – I have received a friendly amendment – to rename the seat to Miscellaneous Program Seat. Bethany accepts that

Kiley – motion to vote on bylaws with friendly amendment Second Ayes Nay with Steve and James

Moved into voting Bylaws clearly pass with friendly amendment. Executive Treasurer – presents treasurers manual

Does everyone have the treasures manual. I’m not going to go over the whole thing because it is 12 pages long. Please look over it and note any changes that you see, they are underlined or marked otherwise. Are there any queries?

Seeing none, Cameron yields to the chair.

Any motions?

John – more to accept as is Seconded Ayes clearly have it

Treasurer’s manual clearly passes.

Open Forum

Mike – I am pleasantly surprised with how much discussion we had – I am so excited with so many people raising questions, new and old. All of the points were very valid, and went really well.

Advisor Report: Dean P: I apologize for being late; I was accepting an award on behalf of Elon. One of my greatest joys in my job is that I get to be here with you every Thursday night. I want you to think about the fact that it is a privilege for you all to be here as well. Your peers have recommended/voted you to be here. This body in the past had indeed truly spent a lot of time and effort that have resulted in monumental changes. For those of you who have waited until the last minute for a paper and needed to get into the library at 3am you can thank SGA. For those of you who aren’t quite up to making the meal time, you can thank SGA because their work with Aramark will allow you to eat as many meals in a day that you want. There have been many great discussions as well. With overseeing allocating funds – you allocate over 500,000 a year. That’s a lot of money. My expectation is that Cameron knows where every penny is going. Your peers have entrusted you to do that. It is something that everyone doesn’t realize how much money it is. That’s a big responsibility. These four people up here – it’s been wonderful to work with them. I feel very confident that they will lead you in a direction that will be positive and beneficial. I have an open door policy, and that’s where you will come to get the key. You must bring the key back every time also. My secretary Ms Ratliff is also there to help you. She may not return for the rest of the semester, because her husband is extremely ill, but she is my right arm. If there is anything that I can do for you as a senator or if you just need somebody to talk to please don’t hesitate to contact me. I see great comfort in seeing old faces, and excited with seeing new senators.

Announcements

Cameron – Finance committee – meet after the meeting.

Colleen – For those of you who don’t know I am the service seat. The last senate gave a lot of money for NC Elon service day April 16th. We are going to help them make sandwiches for those people the day before. The first 10 people to sign up get a free shirt. There are a lot of service things in April – 16th service day and run for respect 23rd – paint the town red – painting murals in Burlington 29th – lollapalooza – 30th sing for swings – fundraisers for family abuse services Gibby – Campus Rec is hosting a dodgeball tournament – April 15th, Rosters are due by noon tomorrow. This will be a fun event, please come out and support.

Valronica – Elon’s Finest is having their first semi formal April 16th and everyone is invited to come.

Rebecca – There are two lacrosse games Saturday playing UNC at 2 and Wake at 3 – Also, club volleyball is #1 in state and are going to nationals – Roller hockey is also going to regional competitions.

Jon – Next Thursday the advisory board for communications is coming to visit all day long. After convocation around 5 there will be an event in the front of McEwen to mingle and have free food.

Dean P – needs to meet with all Presidents and Vice Presidents of all classes at the end of meeting.

Roll Call – Maggie Piggott

Adjourn

Meeting adjourned at approximately 9:30.