Tuesday, Sept. 3, the Student Assembly of the College of William and Mary Senate met for the first time for the fall 2024 semester and confirmed three SA review board nominations from SA President Terra Sloane ’25.
The senate also heard from Senior Vice President for Student Affairs and Public Safety Virginia Ambler ’88, Ph.D. ’06 who introduced Associate Vice President of Student Engagement and Leadership Michael Patterson. Ambler also touched on recent administrative restructuring at the Student Affairs department.
Special Business
Ambler began by introducing Patterson to the senate. Patterson, a new AVP in Student Affairs, is new to the College. He previously served as assistant vice president for student affairs at State University of New York at New Paltz.
“In particular, this group, this is a group that I’m excited to get to know,” Patterson said. “I have — at my previous institution — served as a student government advisor for 14 years, and I know the important work that you have ahead of you, being stewards of the student voice and student resources, and that comes with lots of balances in terms of understanding your own personal voice and balancing that to institutional voice and the voice of all of our students.”
Ambler then discussed the new organizational structure in the Student Affairs division, which occurred over the summer. The change saw the discontinuation of the dean of students role.
“Let me just start by saying, you know, transitions in work in general happen, and sometimes they’re challenging,” Ambler said. “And it was not expected that Dean [of Students Stacey] Harris was going to leave this summer.”
She stated that when she learned that Harris had accepted a position at Duke University, her leadership team and her got together to try to figure out how do to restructure the department “in a way that puts our vision first, that puts our students first, and that helps us do our very the very best that we can to support our students going forward.”
Ambler pointed out that the new structure allows for student services to be expansive as responsibilities are more spread out throughout the department.
Class of 2026 President Zoe Wang ’25, M.P.P. ’26 inquired about ways in which students are able to get in contact with members of the Student Affairs team, both new and old.
“I think some students might be missing the individual connection they were able to have with someone like a dean of students,” Wang said.
Ambler responded by saying that she welcomes ideas regarding ways to connect from the senate but also that her team is planning out dates for when students can come in and have conversations over lunch with administrators.
When asked by Class of 2026 Sen. Spencer Krivo ’25 if the new plan would present any organizational barriers in administrators within the department from collaborating, Ambler said, “Hopefully not.”
When answering a question from Sen. Sophie Kennedy ’27 about whether the change was planned before or after Harris’s departure, Ambler did not specify when the discussions occurred but said it was a result of “amazing brainstorming over a period of a couple of weeks this summer with the leadership team.”
Additionally, Sydney Manlove ’24, MA.Ed. ’26, who is the former chair of the College’s Undergraduate Honor Council, is joining the senate as a representative of the School of Education. Arts and Sciences graduate Sen. Morgan Brittain returned to the senate after a two-year hiatus. The senate did not swear in the pair but plans to do so at a later date.
The senate then considered three review board nominations: Zane Peters J.D. ’26, Muhammad Al Saffar ’26 and former Independent Elections Commission Chair Jason Zheng ’26. The chamber unanimously confirmed all three after hearing their presentations without debate.
The review board is tasked with overseeing issues regarding the SA Code and Constitution.
Last year, it called for a special election for the SA presidential race after determining that the involvement of Graduate Council President Owen Williams ’23, M.P.P. ’25, who served as SA attorney general at the time, in Sloane’s campaign, violated the code.
Peters is interested in constitutional law and has clerked for a litigator’s office. Al Saffar is a neuroscience major at the College and served as the attorney general for Virginia Model General Assembly. Zheng previously headed the IEC last year and ran for Class of 2026 president in 2022.
New Business
Krivo, Sen. Matt Swenson ’26 and Chair of the Senate Sen. Hazel Vineet ’25 introduced The Let’s Vote Act II, which aims to allocate $580 from SA reserves to fund promotional materials for student voter engagement efforts.
Krivo also introduced the The T-Shirt Purchasing Act Part III, seeking funding for t-shirts to be sold during Family Weekend and Homecoming and Reunion weekends.
The bill did not specify the cost of the production of the t-shirts nor the price they would be sold for during family weekend.
Additionally, the legislation cites a need for SA to “foster a closer connection between current students and alumni as well as better engaging with the student body and their families.”
Executive Updates
Sloane said any interested member of the senate who would like to work with a student representative on board of visitors committees to reach out to them. University-wide committee appointments have also been finalized.
The senate’s next meeting will be in the James room of the Sadler Center Tuesday, Sept. 10.
Also at this week’s meeting:
- SA Vice President Oscar Lazo ’25 said he was scheduled to meet with College President Katherine Rowe’s chief of staff, Carlane Pittman-Hampton Ph.D. ’03 and Ambler to discuss holding a “Better Arguments” event for the campus community aimed at promoting civil dialogue.
- “Katherine Rowe really wants to do something at Busch Gardens. I’m not sure if we can really take 5,000, 6,000 undergrads over there with how little money they would be giving us, but if you hear me asking for a little bill for a couple hundred, I’m ready for that hefty conversation,” Lazo said.
- Aramark Executive Director of Hospitality at the College Adam Poling attended the Senate meeting and expressed interest in meeting with members of the Senate regarding dining. Sen. Ashlynn Parker ’26 said she would like to see him giving a presentation on dining changes. Poling said he would be happy to do so, including explaining the discontinuation of Griffin Deals.
- SA Attorney General Elijah Poetzinger ’25 said an election incongruity between the code and constitution was discovered. He said the code required the election information sessions to take place at least four weeks prior to the election, with the notice of those sessions to be public one week prior.
- The constitution, however, calls for the fall elections to take place on the fifth Thursday of the school year, which would mean the information sessions and such notices would have had to take place over the summer.
- Poetzinger said constitutional supremacy solved it for this election season but advised the Senate to fix the discrepancy as soon as is convenient.
- Vineet said she was contacted by a student senator at American University over the summer regarding their support for a ceasefire resolution and their attempt at forming a coalition of those in support of a ceasefire.
- Krivo said the faculty member whom he was working with on fostering safe dialogues regarding the war in Gaza left the College and asked for recommendations for other faculty members who might be suitable.
- Sloane said one median has been placed outside the College’s Admissions Office and that the location for a new flashing beacon has been approved. “One has been placed on Jamestown road outside of the admissions office, and they are, sadly, they were late with repainting crosswalks, so we’re hoping that that will happen soon, but they have not been repainted yet,” Sloane said.
