The newly minted 2017-2018 SGA Senate resembled a toddler taking its first formative steps at Thursday night’s Senate meeting. At the meeting, Senate passed its first piece of legislation, selected committee chairs and confirmed Colin Bennett as parliamentarian.

The Senate meeting began with a brief update from Chris D’Esposito, the director of Transportation Services, on current construction projects, the effectiveness of multi-space pay stations and the addition of four new vans to the 348-RIDE fleet.

After D’Esposito’s announcement, the senate quickly and unanimously confirmed Colin Bennett as SGA parliamentarian, a position charged with maintaining rules of order at meetings. The position is a familiar one to Bennett, since he served as SGA parliamentarian last academic year as well.

Once Bennett was confirmed, senate broke off into committees for the first time. After getting acquainted, each committee expeditiously selected a chair. The following students were elected as committee chairs: Mary Elizabeth Clements, Academic Affairs; Eric Silver, Finance; Clay Gaddis, Rules; Daniela Bishop, Resolutions; Baily Martin, Student Affairs; Colin MacWilliam, Oversight; and Harrison Adams, External Affairs.

The next order of business at the senate meeting involved a bill codifying student organizational seating guidelines. The bill, authored by senators Baily Martin and Harrison Adams, contains guidelines on how the Board of Governors will be selected as well as rules defining how the Board of Governors that is selected will allocate student organization seating for home football games. The senate rules committee found the bill favorable by a vote of six to zero.

Before it could be voted on, Senator Mike Smith attempted to add an amendment to the student seating bill. According to Smith’s amendment, “No member of Theta Nu Epsilon shall be selected to the Board of Governors.” A short debate over adding the amendment ensued.

“I think with this amendment we would be operating under a system of guilty until innocent, rather than innocent until proven guilty,” co-author of the bill Harrison Adams stated.

The senate voted the amendment down in a lopsided roll-call vote, with 32 senators against the amendment and only 9 in favor, while 4 abstained.

The bill codifying student organizational seating guidelines was passed, marking the first piece of legislation passed by the new senate.

Vice President of Financial Affairs Charlie Steinmetz proceeded to present two acts, one to “approve the organizational funding requests suggested by the financial affairs committee for the month of April” and one to “establish a pay scale” for SGA officers of each of the three branches. The first act to approve organizational funding requests was passed immediately. The second act to establish a pay scale for SGA officers was relegated to the financial affairs committee.

Order of Events

1. Announcement from Chris D’Esposito, the Director of Transportation Services
2. Nomination of Colin Bennett for Parliamentarian
3. Break off into Committees
4. Bill Codifying Student Organizational Seating Guidelines passed
5. Introduction of Acts