XAVIER SGA Votes Against Amendments
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XAVIER Published by the students of Volume CVI Issue 15 Xavier University since 1915 December 4, 2019 NEWSWIRE Fiat justitia, ruat caelum xaviernewswire.com SGA votes against amendments A series of changes to SGA’s constitution failed to pass on Monday BY MO JUENGER AND with the SGA executives RYAN KAMBICH throughout the process and fielded questions from sena- 6WDৼ:ULWHUV tors. Those code changes took The Student Government a while to work through. We Association (SGA) senate simply did not have the time voted against a series of ma- to do that with these consti- jor constitutional changes on tutional changes, which argu- Monday that would have re- ably deserve much more and structured much of the orga- wider conversations.” nization. Monday was SGA’s Many senators attributed final meeting before the start the failure of the plan to a of a new term with new mem- “friendly amendment” added bers in January. to the proposed amendments The proposed constitution- during Monday’s meeting. al changes aimed to usher in That amendment stated that four major revisions to the the deans of the four colleges structure of SGA beginning could choose the four senators in fall 2020: reducing the on Academic Affairs, rath- number of elected senators Photo courtesy of by Xavier Univerisity er than have those senators from 20 to 17 and establishing Student Government Association senators voted against changing the organization’s constitution. The elected by the student body. a speaker of the senate posi- proposed changes were a point of contention among some of the senators and with the Board of Elections. “This (would) bring us to tion; providing for one SGA Vice President Alfredo time constraints, in order to er wrote in a statement: “As a a total number of eight ap- vice president instead of two; Mercedes, the main propo- find a way for them to be able board, we tried to understand pointed officials,” Senator Sam creating three new appointed nent for and architect of the to have students vote for their the changes and met with Al- Peters said during the meet- cabinet positions (chief of proposed changes, stated that specific college or whatever. fredo to better understand ing. “Doubling the number of staff, director of communica- their goal was to align Xavi- But they said in our meeting how the changes affected us. nonelected students would be tions and director of finance) er’s SGA more closely with two weeks ago that, over the At the next Senate meeting problematic.” and a chief justice position; student governments at other summer, they were able to we expressed our concerns. Peters’ discontent was and requiring that each col- Jesuit universities. communicate with other uni- We know that with our cur- shared by Vice President-elect lege elect one senator to serve Mercedes introduced the versities to update their elec- rent system of voting, the and current Senator Mickey on SGA’s four-member Aca- proposed changes 12 weeks tion code.” changes being suggested Townsend. demic Affairs Committee. ago, though many senators Senator Beth Root, who would make it extremely hard, “This is a student club, This last change would and the BoE learned about was involved in the creation if not impossible, to run a fair not a faculty and staff club,” have required significant re- them as recently as three of the new constitution, ex- election. That is our only goal Townsend said in a discussion visions to the Board of Elec- weeks ago. pressed during the meeting as a board.” after the decision. tions (BoE) code to accommo- “It wasn’t until the first that she believes the measure Tiemeyer also stated that Mercedes, whose term ex- date the specific election of at week of November where could have passed if BoE was BoE sent a survey to other Je- pired on Monday, believes the least one senator from each we finally started to actually involved earlier. suit schools to learn how they Senate will discuss the con- college. All SGA senators are start changing language (in “It’s our fault for not reach- ran elections. stitutional changes further in currently elected at-large re- the constitution)…not even ing out to BoE sooner,” Root “Last semester we made coming months. He expects gardless of college member- enough to update the entire said. significant changes to the a new version to be passed in ship. SGA about it,” Mercedes said. Nonetheless, Mercedes code. As a part of that pro- February or March. Revision of the BoE code On the changes to the BoE believes that the plan fell cess, we sent out a survey to “I don’t know what exact- proved to be the sticking code, Mercedes noted, “BoE? through because of SGA over- other Jesuit schools to better ly happened,” Mercedes said. point in the final vote. Three- Not going to lie, they weren’t sight and what he perceived as understand how (they) ran “I’m hopeful that it’ll change, fourths of the senate must included… Originally, when the BoE’s inefficiency. their elections,” he said. “We because I think we just want vote in favor to pass amend- we had the conversation last “They’re lazy,” Mercedes used that information to bet- to ensure that SGA in the fu- ments to the SGA constitu- semester, it was very brief said of the BoE. “They don’t ter understand how schools ture is well off and is actually tion. After confusion during with (BoE Chair) Miles (Ti- want to work, they don’t want handle their own problems so doing things right, not really a first count, several senators emeyer)…then we complete- to put in the work behind find- that we could attempt to ad- just 15 to 20 people who are switched from affirming the ly forgot about it. And then I ing a new system. If you can dress ours. just half-in half-out, don’t re- changes to opposing them. completely forgot about BoE, talk to other schools…Other “Those small changes to ally know what they’re doing The final vote count was sev- not gonna lie. schools do it, so that means our code (during the last re- and don’t really know why en in favor, eight against and “BoE said it would be hard, there’s a way to do it.” vision) took us months to they’re there. More so people one abstained. extremely difficult, given the BoE Chair Miles Tiemey- work on. We offered to meet who are actually dedicated.” In this issue... Campus News, Page 2 Op-Eds, Page 4 Sports, Page 6 A&E, Page 7 After a spell of ALL card Veteran Newswire mem- The Crosstown Guest writer Liz Harris outages, the system is bers Ellen Siefke and Shootout is coming praises Xavier Theatre’s back to working the Ryan Kambich leave us soon. Check out what latest play, The Wolves, way it should. some wise words. to expect here. for its power. 2 December 4, 2019 Campus News xaviernewswire.com ALL Card outages are resolved Students will no longer experience issues with ALL Cards not working BY HUNTER ELLIS For many years, Xavier Xavier could not update to the intermittent, the issues with ran said. 6WDৼ:ULWHU used the same transaction newest software right away, ALL Cards in the bookstore Just as sudden as the issue This semester, many stu- system to manage all pay- Moran explained. were considered more serious appeared, it corrected itself. dents have experienced diffi- ments made through the ALL “Thinking of it in terms by Auxiliary Services. In one The reason the systems began culties with their ALL Cards Cards, including meal plans, of Apple updates, we were occasion during mid-October, to work properly again also not being accepted at various dining dollars and X-Cash. only able to go from, say, iOS the Gallagher Bookstore ex- remains unknown. on-campus vendors and vend- In August, Xavier performed 12.1 to iOS 13.1, instead of perienced a complete blackout According to Moran, while ing machines. After updates to its first update to the system. the latest and greatest update, that disabled ALL Card trans- this means the issue could re- the system, it is believed that Previously, the university felt 13.2.3, because of the limita- actions in the store for an en- appear in the future, the up- these problems will no longer the updates to the software tions in hardware on campus, tire week. dated system will hopefully occur. would not be helpful. particularly to the way we do While this outage could prevent a blackout like this According to Bill Moran, During the summer, the credit card processing,” Mo- have been connected to the from happening again. the Director of Auxiliary university was forced to up- ran said. new system, it is unlikely, Mo- “These issues aren’t accept- Services, a new transaction date the system because the Xavier also recently updat- ran said. It is believed that able for us,” Moran said. “We system has played a role in version of the software it had ed its credit card processing the issue was a more robust want the card to swipe and what are being called “outag- was set to expire at the end of systems. Moran hopes this breakdown of communica- work effortlessly 99.9% of the es” across campus. the calendar year. However, will enable the university to tions between Xavier’s and time and we don’t feel like we update its software to the lat- Follett’s transaction systems, are there yet right now.” est version during the win- Follett being the third party The ALL Card program November 25 and December 2 ter break.