The Student Assembly senate voted Tuesday to fund $5,700 for a debate on abortion to be hosted by the Students for Life.
The two participants will be Nadine Strossen, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union and current professor at New York Law School, and Sean Klusendorf, president of the Life Training Institute. The money will be allocated from the Student Activities and Events fund.
The senate unanimously passed the 2011 General Election Referenda Act I, which resolves to gauge student opinion on the SA-sponsored free STI testing at the Student Health Center.
The 2011 General Election Referenda Act II, sponsored by Zach Marcus ’12, resolved to ask whether students would approve of a merger between the two branches of the Student Assembly: the executive and the senate.
“If we’re going to reform the constitution, we should know whether students care enough for us to put so much time and effort into rewriting the constitution,” Ryan Ruzic J.D. ’11 said. “If the results of the referenda were to show that students were wildly in favor of reform, it is a powerful message that we should seriously consider.”
The bill failed on a tiebreaking vote cast by Kaveh Sadeghian ’12.
The Senate unanimously passed the Table Rental Act proposed by Mike Young ’11, which subsidizes the purchases of tables in the Sadler Center by student groups.
The Table Rental Act also passed the Executive Update Act, which stipulates that there will continue to be a designated slot in the Senate agenda for executive updates.
Ruzic introduced the Reform Your Assembly Now Enforcement Act, which allows senators to vote to impeach secretaries within the executive branch, if the secretary has had four consecutive non-excused absences from their committee meetings during their tenure.
“As Outreach chair, I had to deal with an executive secretary who missed seven consecutive meetings and only offered an excuse after the first meeting,” Ruzic said. “This is a narrowly tailored bill, but I think it is necessary.”
Ruzic said he had yet to confirm the constitutionality of the bill.
Chase Koontz ’14 introduced the “I am W&M Bill,” which would provide $1,000 dollars for the purchase of 600 T-shirts to be distributed on Admitted Students day.
Shep Walker ’11 posed a bill to cap funding to student groups at 30 percent of the Student Activities Reserve unless they consent to have a member of the student assembly sit on their board. Currently, no student groups take 30 percent of SA Reserve; AMP currently receives about 20 percent.
The senate reached their goal of sponsoring 100 bills this year at this meeting.