During Tuesday night’s Student Assembly senate meeting, senators voted to make permanent the Cabinet Delegate position which Sen. E’Driana Berry ’17 currently holds. A bill was passed earlier in the semester to create this position and give SA President Eboni Brown ’17 the ability to select a delegate, but Tuesday’s Permanent Cabinet Delegate Act 2.0 codified this new position.
According to Chairman of the Senate Danny O’Dea ’18, the position was originally created to improve transparency between Brown’s executive branch and the senate, not because of Brown’s presidency but that of the two SA presidents before her.
“The reason we are doing it now is because of two previous presidents,” O’Dea said. “There was a lot of miscommunication that caused a lot of tension within the Student Assembly itself. This is obviously not anything regarding Eboni’s administration, just to ensure that in the future nothing like that will happen again.”
“The reason we are doing it now is because of two previous presidents,” O’Dea said. “There was a lot of miscommunication that caused a lot of tension within the Student Assembly itself. This is obviously not anything regarding Eboni’s administration, just to ensure that in the future nothing like that will happen again.”
Class of 2019 President Jonah Yesowitz ’19 started a discussion on whether or not an amendment or revision to the SA code should be made to allow — or disallow — class presidents from holding the position of Cabinet Delegate.
Prior to the meeting, the code specified that class presidents could not be the chair of two standing senate committees or hold the position of Chairman of the Senate, Senate Secretary or Senate Historian.
Yesowitz proposed voting on the bill as it was, without specifying whether or not a class president could hold this position, and then having the Code Revision Committee meet to discuss making that change in the code.
“The way this bill was written is not specific at all,” Yesowitz said. “The best solution now would be, that if we believe in this bill, to pass it and then Code Revision [Committee] can meet and decide whether or not to add Cabinet Delegate to that part of the code [that would exclude class presidents].”
Instead of doing this, Sen. Mitch Croom M.A. ’16 proposed an amendment that required a vote by hand of the sponsors of the bill. The sponsors were Croom, Yesowitz, Class of 2017 President Emily Thomas ’17, Sen. Alaina Shreves ’18, Sen. Annelise Yackow ’18, O’Dea, Sen. Brendan Boylan ’19, Sen. Alexis Payne ’19, Sen. Sikander Zakriya ’19, Sen. Ellie Thomas ’20 and Class of 2020 President Kelsey Vita ’20.
This amendment added the phrase “delegate” to the code, specifying that class presidents could not hold the position of Cabinet Delegate. This establishes the position as something equivalent to the other established senate leadership roles as well. Of the sponsors, only Yesowitz voted against adding this amendment.
Following the addition of the amendment, the bill was passed by a roll call vote. All senators voted in favor of the amendment.
