Members of a Student Senate ad hoc committee for presidential review met with University President Bruce Speck and Faculty Senate President Roger Chelf before the Student Senate meeting on Wednesday.

Chairman Nathan Hicks, junior political science major, said both sides were “honest and open” to the committee.

“Speck has been more than willing, he brought us right into his office immediately,” Hicks said.

“[Speck] also encouraged us to talk to the faculty members so it wasn’t one-sided,” said committee member Nathan Starmer, sophomore political science major.

Other members of the committee are Tristan Routledge, freshman political science major, Micah McCartney, Jeff Harman, senior political science major, Lauren Alumbaugh, senior music education major, and Julie Spencer, senior secondary education major. McCartney and Spencer were unable to attend the meetings.

Will Lynch, Student Senate president, appointed the committee during the Senate’s meeting last week.

“I found five people that I thought would be active in seeking student opinion on the matter, that have a pretty good idea what’s going on, are active on campus, and are going to take it seriously so that what needs to happen for the Senate happens without having personal bias ahead of time,” said Lynch.

Neither Alumbaugh nor Spencer were part of the original five, but made requests to Lynch to be on the committee last week during Student Senate’s first official meeting.

“I think that it looks more fair to have equal gender representation,” Alumbaugh said. “I will do my best to hear both sides and give my opinion.

“Aside from being a girl or not I just heard a lot of things that sounded fishy because I’ve been around Dr. Speck…he’s been really active on campus and it didn’t sound like him and it didn’t sound like there were founded reasons for him to be accused of these things. I would just like to know more about the situation.”

Hicks said the committee would go over the information obtained from both sides and discuss further actions at their next meeting.

“Right now we’re getting our preliminary findings,” Hicks said. “We want to send a preliminary report to the Board of Governors and give the final report at their November meeting.”

Students can e-mail the committee to express their opinion at [email protected].

During the Student Senate meeting there was no old or new business to report.

Before the meeting, the vacancy committee met with Ruth Eichinger, Greg Huse, freshman early childhood education major, Howie Linderman, senior English major, and Courtney Moore, junior secondary education major, for reviews to fill the vacancy seats. Huse, Linderman and Moore were voted into senate during the meeting. Lynch made a motion not to take a vote on Eichinger who was absent, until the following Wednesday.

Next Wednesday the Student Senate meeting should resume in it’s regular room in the Billingsly Student Center. The meeting has been held in Spiva Library for the last two weeks due to a power outage in the BSC.