SGA reps could be removed from A-Senate committee
Student Government Association representatives might soon be excluded from a top Academic Senate committee if a proposed membership change passes at today's meeting.
The membership amendment directly applies to the A-Senate’s Committee on Committees – a non-policy making committee that helps populate other policy-making committees.
Among the proposed changes, the amendment calls for the removal of three seats allocated for SGA representatives appointed to the A-Senate body. The rationale for the removal of student participation cites “a long history of unsuccessful recruitment and poor attendance” from SGA.
The implication from A-Senate leadership that SGA has in some way been absent from its duties, has upset Student Government Association President Marie Reimers.
“I’m frustrated and tired of the Academic Senate implying that the SGA drops the ball on these kinds of things,” Reimers said.
Filling the seats is difficult when the SGA is unaware of its vacancies, Reimers said.
“We were never asked to fill these seats,” she said. “We were not aware of their existence until after we were informed they were going away.”
Reimers said SGA only learned about the empty Committee on Committees seats once the proposal landed as an agenda item, becoming aware after SGA Senator and A-Senate member Sandy Lane personally presented the issue to her.
The problem she sees, as evidenced by this amendment, is not their attendance record, but rather a severe lack of communication between the faculty government body and its student government counterpart.
However, Committee on Committees Chair Roschelle Heuberger, who has chaired the committee seven times over the past several years, said it has been exhausting trying to recruit responsible students who take the committee and its duties seriously.
"Student participation is just completely non-existent," Heuberger said. "In order for me to even just get two-thirds quorum, I need to have every student member there for one meeting, but time and time again, the students might not even show up. I can't even get a quorum. It has become absolutely tiring for me to have to hunt down students over email just to get a vote – emails they don't answer.
"This is in no way an anti-student move. It's to reduce the workload, especially if I have to call a new meeting just to get a vote."
Wherever the blame belongs, Lane said there is only one way to solve the problem – to get involved again.
Lane’s focus is on retaining the few avenues of participation students still have, and in the interim, he and two other SGA A-Senate representatives have filled the vacant positions temporarily.
“Having this potentially taken away from us sparked something in SGA,” Lane said. “I don’t want to give up student representation. I don’t want to give up on student’s rights.”
To do that, SGA Senator Kevin White is working on an amendment to the proposal allowing at least one student representative to remain on the committee. If the amendment passes, Reimers said Lane would take the vacant seat.
“We don’t believe we need an overwhelming presence in Academic Senate, but we still need one,” she said.
If student representation does remain, Heuberger hopes student involved actually wants the position and is responsible enough to handle it – or rather, responsible enough to just show up.
"I want someone who is invested," she said. "Someone who is helping us and not someone who I have to hunt down to come to a meeting. They have to be vetted and be responsible and reply via email when I send one out. I didn’t anticipate this to be a firestorm, especially if they’re not even going to send someone to be on the committee. I didn’t feel like anyone would actually care because no one has in all the years I've chaired the committee."
Whether or not the SGA drafted amendment will pass – let alone the initial amendment drafted by Heuberger – is still a major unknown, according to A-Senate Chairperson Andrew Spencer.
“I gave up a long time ago trying to predict what could or couldn’t pass,” Spencer said.
Spencer explained that before Lane informed Reimers of the potential change, the senator approached him inquiring about what needed to be done to fill the vacant seat.
“It shows that they care and that there was a concern from the student senators,” he said. “I’m happy that students want to be involved.”
