Tuesday, Sept. 10, the College of William and Mary’s Student Assembly Senate met to confirm a Review Board nomination, pass a bill to fund voter engagement efforts and hear executive updates from SA President Terra Sloane ’25.
Special Business
The senate considered and unanimously confirmed the nomination of Christina Wu ’27 to the review board. The review board is tasked with overseeing issues regarding the SA Code and Constitution.
Wu, a prospective government major, is a member of the Conduct and Honor Advisory Program, which provides assistance to students facing conduct and honor charges. She is also involved with the mock trial team and is a cellist for the William and Mary Symphony Orchestra.
“Being part of all these communities has allowed me to understand a wide range of individuals in our student body experience. I believe that I’ll bring a very unique perspective to the Review Board in interpreting how we can best encourage our student government to uphold our ultimate goal of serving and representing the student,” Wu said.
SA Attorney General Elijah Poetzinger ’25 swore in Sen. Sydney Manlove ’24, MA.Ed ’26 and Arts and Sciences graduate Sen. Morgan Brittain.
The two were present at a senate meeting the week prior but were not sworn in. Manlove is joining the chamber from the School of Education and Brittain is an Arts and Sciences graduate senator who returned after a two-year hiatus.
New Business
Senate Chair Hazel Vineet ’25, Sen. Matt Swenson ’26 and Class President Matthew Hwang ’25 introduced The Fall Election Info Session Reform Act, which aims to standardize the SA elections process in the fall.
The move comes after Poetzinger alerted the senate about a discrepancy between the SA Code and SA Constitution.
The current code stipulates that election information sessions for potential candidates must take place four to six weeks before the election, while the constitution states that elections must take place on the fifth Thursday after the first day of classes.
This would mean that, according to the code, information sessions would take place in mid-August before classes start.
Poetzinger said while constitutional supremacy solved the issue for this year, he still urged the senate to formally amend the code to align with the constitution. The bill aims at amending this error by holding information sessions 21 days before the fall election.
The bill also intends to remove the option of mandatory asynchronous sessions, introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic, citing it as no longer necessary. Ultimately, the Independent Elections Commission will be tasked with determining the format for all of the information sessions.
Old Business
The Senate unanimously passed The Let’s Vote Act, sponsored by Class of 2026 Sen. Spencer Krivo ’25, Vineet and Swenson. The bill allocated $580 from SA Reserves to fund promotional materials for student voter engagement efforts.
The bill will fund fliers, stickers and palm cards. The designs of the graphics had been updated since the bill was introduced.
“One comment was that the initial graphic designs were slightly bad but we changed it,” Swenson, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, said.
During the discussion of the bill, Krivo floated the idea of SA collaborating with the gender-inclusive service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega to drive students in golf carts to voting locations, saying he had discussed it with Sen. Laayba Tanoli ’26.
The College’s Director of Student Leadership Development Anne Arseneau BA ’89, MA.Ed ’92 responded by suggesting that SA could instead use internal vans that it already owns.
“I mean, if you all think transportation is important and you own four vehicles, I don’t know why you’d outsource the transportation, instead of using your own vehicles and doing that internally, that would be a question I would ask,” Arseneau said.
Afterwards, Class of 2026 President Zoe Wang ’25, M.P.P. ’26 noted that both voting areas are very walkable.
The senate also considered The T-Shirt Purchasing Act II, which would have allocated up to $2,900 from SA Reserves to purchase 250 shirts for $10.50 each, and sell for $15 each.
After a long discussion regarding the merits of selling T-shirts during Family Weekend to fundraise for SA, Krivo decided to ultimately withdraw the bill to consider other potential options.
Several senators, including Brittain, noted that T-shirts would be an unsustainable option. Brittain emphasized that cotton takes a lot of water to produce and apparel would become a single-use item. As someone who has worked in alumni engagement, Brittain said smaller items are kept longer.
Swenson noted that his committee reported “conditional negative unanimous,” citing that it thought T-shirts were unsustainable and that there were better options for merchandise.
Krivo is slated to reintroduce the bill as The Swag Purchasing Act, proposing a $1,000 budget to purchase 300 tote bags at a cost of $2.64 each, selling them at $8 per bag.
Executive Updates
Sloane started her updates by encouraging senators to tell people to apply for positions in the SA executive branch. She then noted that the SA-sponsored Virginia Symphony Orchestra concert held at the Martha Wren Briggs Amphitheatre at Lake Matoaka was a success.
Sloane also highlighted the City of Williamsburg’s Future Fest event held in the Crim Dell Meadows Friday, Sept. 20, citing that it enabled the city to connect with students.
The SA president also touched on her meeting with Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Suzanne Raitt. She reported having asked the dean about mid-year evaluations for professors, to which Raitt was very receptive and said would put in a request to Faculty Assembly to implement them.
Raitt also shared with Sloane that it was not possible to extend the reading period. For logistical reasons, the College cannot adjust the amount of teaching days on the calendar. However, Raitt encouraged Sloane not give up hope for the future
Sloane also solicited suggestions from the senate for guest speakers. Among those listed were Chief Diversity Officer Chon Glover M.Ed. ’99, Ed.D. ’06, Director of Housing and Residence Life Harriet Kandell, Senior Assistant to the President and Secretary of the Board of Visitors Michael J. Fox HON’16, Associate Provost and University Registrar Alana Davis ’01, Medical Director and Student Health Center Staff Physician Dr. David Dafashy, Dean of University Libraries Carrie Cooper and Professor of Economics and Faculty Assembly President David Feldman.
Brittain also suggested that the senate consider holding joint sessions with the Graduate Council, Faculty Assembly and Staff Assembly.
Also at this week’s meeting:
- A temporary technical difficulty led to Manlove, who joined the meeting via Zoom, to not hear Arseneau or Poetzinger as she was getting sworn in, delaying the process slightly.
- When brainstorming ideas of administrative faculty to speak at future meetings, Arseneau suggested bringing back the community town hall. “Some of those might be scalable for this group, but some of those might be ones where bringing back the model of a town hall held once or twice a semester around a particular issue is something that student assembly has done before,” Arseneau said.