Procedural questions, International Club request dominates Senate debate

After a controversial meeting last week, Senate returns to order.

During the Oct. 25 meeting, one allocation caused some confusion.

According to Senator Dylan Slagle, it was an allocation for the International Club to visit Silver Dollar City.

Originally, the finance committee suggested allocating $0 and the motion was seconded, but there was no vote. Then discussion was opened. During the discussion one motion came up for $700 and another for $500, but the problem was with procedure and how the motions came up and how the discussions were not properly conducted with senators speaking out of turn.

These things all brought up some questions for Slagle.

“From my initial observation Student Senate doesn’t have any real established Robert’s Rules of Order,” Slagle said.

“We don’t have an abridged, we don’t have a version that we follow, and so there’s really no reason or motivation for any Senator in the chamber to follow any sort of order at all.”

Originally he was opposed to allocating money to the International Club for it’s trip because he did not believe the trip was educational. But that’s not what brought up the conflict.

“There’s no beef between me and the International Club at all, I think they’re perfectly legitimate,” Slagle said. “I just think the problem was with the procedure,”

He said there were several other senators also against the allocation, but he didn’t believe his side was heard because of the “chaos” that was going on during that time.

No other senators commented on the subject.

Another possible cause of the problem could have been because Senate President John Carr was not present at the Oct. 25 meeting, but he did return for the Nov. 1 meeting.

At the beginning of the meeting the treasury started with $8,967.97 in its budget and only allocated $125 during the meeting.

The allocation was for the Russian Club to see the Moscow Orchestra. The original request was for $710. But Whitney Souza, Senate treasurer, said she based her $125 allocation on the fact that the amount would pay for half of each ticket.

During the meeting, Kristen Earnest, Senate secretary, told the Senate that she was going to attend an upcoming meeting about how to make basketball games more fun, so if any senators had suggestions they should go to her.

Also mentioned at the meeting was a coupon book one of the committees is working on.

“We are sending a letter to all the businesses in the local area about coupons to see if they do discounts, for example Tropical Tan gives 20% discount to all Southern students and some don’t know that,” said Senator Julie Peteson.

“So we’re going to put out a letter that tells everyone at school which restaurants honor discounts to students.”

In total there were 11 senators not present at the meeting. One senator, Michael Watson, will lose his seat because of absences.

There was also a new addition to the board. Kevin Smith was brought forward by the vacancy committee, voted on and passed.

The Student Senate’s next regularly scheduled meeting will be at 5:30 p.m. Wed. Nov. 8 in the Billingsly Student Center.