As much as they tried to negate the good deeds done during Tuesday night, Your Student Assembly actually accomplished something during a two and half hour meeting marred by petty disputes, closed session and a certain senator’s obvious inability to open his mouth for no less than 13 minutes at a time.
The Student Handbook Response Act and the Equal Voices Act, both passed, address the significant and unfortunate changes made to the student handbook over the summer. Several changes have effectively removed student roles on groups responsible for making meaningful decisions regarding conduct violations, suspensions and reinstatement. Pending BOV approval, the administration also intends to lower the standard of evidence necessary to convict a student of a conduct violation. The SA plans to broadly publicize the changes made in an effort to raise student support for reform and I personally hope that they do an excellent job. In the mean time it is very important to realize that your position relative to the administration’s in a conduct violation is substantially lower than it was last semester. Please, STAY OUT OF TROUBLE.
The About That Election Act was also passed and allocates up to $5,000 for the purchase of some sort of electronic election internet device. The details on this one are quite fuzzy and the SA has given itself three days to find a better intermediary than eBallot (which charges $4,800 for a voting platform integrated with Blackboard that we will have access to for one year) to host the upcoming freshmen elections. For some reason, it stipulates in the SA’s code that all elections must be electronic which seems extremely foolish since we are about to pay $5,000 for election software that most students could easily do without. Not only would doing elections by hand save thousands of dollars, it would also test the perseverance of all senators. Most have done extremely little to earn their righteous seats of power and would strongly benefit from the humbling experience of spending a few hours sitting in a room counting little pieces of paper.
On to more exciting things! The Big Time Speaker for a Big Time School Act allocates up to $17,000 so renowned author and journalist Christopher Hitchens can come to the Sadler Center Commonwealth on Monday, September 27. Hitchens needs no introduction, I will merely leave you with this:
