Student Assembly President Zach Pilchen ’09 delivered a controversial state of the SA address during Tuesday’s senate meeting.
p. Pilchen used the senators’ election pledges as a jumping off point for his criticisms of the senate.
p. “I haven’t seen anything introduced on so much of this stuff,” Pilchen said.
p. Pilchen cited the 30-page SA agenda, drafted over the summer, which has been disregarded.
p. “We still need an overall goal; we can’t do 30 pages of stuff. If we have problems, let’s hash it out in committee,” Sen. Joe Luppino-Esposito ’08 said.
p. Pilchen discussed how many senators talk about getting started when they should “just do it.”
p. Pilchen also discussed how the executive and the senate are not communicating as well as he would like.
p. “It seems like the organization is moving as two pieces,” he said. “We can’t implement bills unless you’re talking to us.”
p. Toward the end of the debate, Pilchen began to ease up on the senate.
p. “I don’t want you guys to think I’m lambasting the senate,” Pilchen said. “Looking historically, we are doing a good job.”
Many senators were outraged about how the address was conducted.
p. “This is bizarre; I wasn’t expecting Zach to ask for the state of the Student Assembly address from the senate,” Sen. Walter McClean ’09 said.
p. “There is a way to have a productive discussion, and it’s not by antagonizing everyone. I was disappointed to see him point fingers,” Beato said. “I wish he had an overarching goal that he could share with us.”
p. In an interview Wednesday, Pilchen addressed senators’ reaction to his address.
p. “It’s not a good thing for one person to be dictating the direction,” he said. “The meeting was not about reforming the senate, and unfortunately it devolved into people thinking they were being personally attacked. I could have handled our self-evaluation more effectively in a private discussion.”
