Tuesday’s Student Senate meeting opened dramatically when Meadows Senator Roza Essaw addressed the senate regarding one senator’s controversial election.

Former Dedman I Senator Christoph Schmidt was inaugurated as a Cox Senator at the Sept. 13 Student Senate Meeting, filling the previous vacancy.

Schmidt’s resignation and subsequent reelection occurred without the Senate’s recommendation. This change is unprecedented in the Senate.

Essaw decided to publically voice this concern because “I cannot sit there and watch as rules are broken and not take an action to address the problem.”

“When I brought this issue up, I had both the interest of the student body and student senate in mind,” Essaw said.

The Student Senate Constitution, Article 4, Section 2 states that all senators except for first year senators must “Be elected only by the currently enrolled . . . students of [their constituents].” Section 5 of this article dictates that special elections must be approved by “a two-thirds vote of the Student Senate.”

Protocol for this type of situation would mandate Schmidt to resign from his Dedman I post and apply through the Membership Committee to fill the Cox Senator vacancy. After some time of deliberation, the senate would vote on

Schmidt’s request. Also, anyone who wanted to fill the Cox vacancy would be allowed to oppose Schmidt.

Schmidt decided to switch to Cox after declaring his Finance major this fall.

“I thought it would be appropriate to make the switch in order to represent the school in which I study,” Schmidt said.

Simmons Senator Tiffany Hoffman pointed out that she and her fellow senator Laura Schur were inaugurated this summer in a similar fashion to Schmidt. At the time, only

Lucy Needham was officially representing the education school.

According to the official SMU Student Senate calendar for the 2011-2012 year on their website, applications for vacant seats should have been available online starting Aug. 29.

The applications were not available online at that date.

Membership Committee Chair Katherine Ladner is charged with overseeing all special elections and senate vacancies, all well as disseminating all application information. Ladner did not respond to inquiry regarding her involvement in Schmidt’s election.

Essaw called to “revoke” this election.

“As the student governing body, we should be held to higher standards and should not be carelessly breaking rules.”

Lyle Senator Christian Genco agrees with Essaw and believes that the Senate is faced with “a clear and blatant violation of our own guidelines.”

“Senator Schmidt is a fantastic guy and an excellent senator. I’m quite sure he’ll retain his position in senate,” Genco said. “The question is which position [should Schmidt retain] and how to do so in accordance with our constitution and Membership Committee’s bylaws.”

Secretary Martha Pool agreed with Essaw’s claims.

“It needs to be addressed because if we don’t address it, we don’t have a foundation on which the rest of the semester can go on,” Pool said. “Why even have student body wide elections if Senate can arbitrarily appoint people?”