SGA Accomplishes Something

      Wow!  What a fun SGA meeting we had tonight guys!  Not only did we get through our one piece of new business in less than two hours, but we also got to squabble over little nothings along the way.  Let’s get one thing out of the way first – I may be wrong but the resolution we were supposed to pass stated “BE IT ENACTED, the SGA officially endorses the Campus Safety Reform Proposal” – nothing else of consequence was contained in that resolution, least of which was the actual proposal.  The proposal, an independent document created by five senators was only called to be endorsed; it was not voted on or approved.  Therefore, I believe that every call to amend the document was out of order – I believe we could no more amend the Campus Safety Reform Proposal than we could if a similar document had come to us from students outside the SGA asking for our approval.            

           Even if the proceedings were legal, all they demonstrated was apathy disguised under concern.  The point of the general senate meeting is not to rewrite documents submitted to the body – it is to approve them with as little bureaucracy as possible.  The last thing that should have happened was an attempt to systematically tear apart the document.  Either you should have decided to vote, or you should have motioned for the document to be sent back to a drafting committee by tabling it.  What I saw was apathy, pure and simple, people cared about this issue when it came on a Sunday, when they had to be there, but only five actually showed up on Saturday to write the damn thing – if you cared so much about campus safety you should have been there.  I can accept that some senators had conflicts, but almost every senator who opened their mouths began “I wanted to be there on Saturday but …”  The people who treat the SGA as a Sunday-night-only club are a cancer on the organization.  Every one of the issues that were brought up tonight should have been brought up in the, completely open, drafting committee.  This is why we have these committees, so we don’t have to spend two hours rewriting the document. 

            So I’m glad to see we accomplished so much – we changed a document we really had no right to change to say … basically the same thing it did originally and we all clapped at the end and felt good about ourselves because we accomplished something.  As far as I’m concerned, the only people who accomplished anything were Nathan, Mark, Andrew, Krystal, and Andrea.

6 Comments

• 
  Ibrahim Diall April 6, 2008 at 11:30 pm

  I agree with you on this Joe. We, as body, should not be bogged down on amendments. For God sake, we even had an amendment on an amendment. We need to find a way to fix this amendment problem. I feel like senators are making amendments just for the sake of it, because they know they can slow down the body and have us talk about for years. If the first amendment fails, then they would make another one to just for the hell of it. Some just want to tear resolutions as part, for no valid reasons. This is worse than the filibuster the senate has. At least US senators are mature enough to use it for good reasons. We need a new mechanisms to fix this. I will push for some sort of changes in the next year bylaws.
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  Andrea Wise April 7, 2008 at 3:25 pm

  Thank you, Joe, for putting this out there. It was frustrating to me, and to the other sponsors who spent three and a half hours on a Saturday evening writing this document, to hear so many complaints and amendments on this document, when it was sent to every senator before hand, in an e-mail that said,

  “Ladies and Gentlemen myself and the cosponsors of the resolution spent hours today preparing this document and we hope to have your support so that it may pass this through the Senate tomorrow night. It’s a large proposal and if there is a concern that you might have please e-mail me by 12:00 noon tomorrow.”

  Not a single senator e-mailed Andrew with any concerns.
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  Joe Tarzi April 10, 2008 at 1:38 am

  I can’t believe how long they’ve let this post remain at the top of the Web site, that’s apathy too.

  JT
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  David Kimball-Stanley April 11, 2008 at 1:51 pm

  What is absurd about your concerns is that you assume that people who amend things are doing it just to slow the SGA down, as if we really want to SGA too nothing. The truth is that people who amend resolutions, and use the meetings to discuss the proposals being brought up are doing their job and voicing real concerns. The real cancer to the SGA are the Senators who want to close debate just so they can get home faster. These are issues worth discussing and if you would prefer that they be dealt with in a committee, where every senators voice will not be heard, then I don’t know why you signed up for the SGA.
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  Joe Tarzi April 13, 2008 at 3:07 am

  David I never said people who amend things are doing it slow things down and you know that. What I said is that people are trying to disguise their apathy by making it look like they care about the issue when they couldn’t even make it to draft the document. What you are saying is that every senator should have their voices heard – fine, so we’re going to need a lot more time to accomplish that goal, maybe say we schedule a meeting on another day to discuss the campus safety resolution – oh wait, we did and only 5 people wanted their voices heard.

  What I am saying is that everyone should have their voices heard and if they want their voices heard they should be willing to speak more than just between 7 and 9 on Sunday.
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  David Kimball-Stanley April 17, 2008 at 1:50 pm

  Well that meeting was scheduled rather hastily, and people had very little time to actually look at the document to tell Andrew about their other concerns. The SGA is full of committed and active students, so it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to just schedule a meeting time and assume everyone can make it. If we are going to schedule meetings in that silly unilateral way, then you should be prepared for long Sunday nights. People are busy, SGA isn’t all we Senators do, and people who schedule meetings should be sensitive to that. Furthermore, not making it to a meeting does not by any means mean someone is apathetic. I for one was in tech rehearsal for the play, and was not allowed to go to the meeting. I am graded for the production, it is directed by faculty, and there was nothing I could do. Joe, you seem to have a habit of assuming the worst, and its really unbecoming.

  As for the constitutionality of the thing, as the report was an SGA report, it required the entire body to vote on it for it to actually be finished. Otherwise, it would be a report by this ad hoc committee that met once. The sort of procedure you are suggesting would have meant that I, and others with similar concerns, would have had to vote it down. Assuming it didnt pass because of that, wouldnt you agree that it would be a shame to have no document come out of the SGA at all just because of an absurd view of parliamentary procedure?