Student Body President Alex Mace opened the Senate meeting on Tuesday by swearing in eight new senators. In their oaths these new senators swore to uphold the SMU Senate Constitution and by-laws and represent the interests of their constituency.
President Mace then discussed the potential adaptations to the Senate’s policy via the “proactive ad hoc” R&R (Research and Recommendations) Committee.
This committee’s job will be to examine the Senate’s extant documents on organization, and explore reform options. The call for improvement in functionality comes in response to concerns raised by constituent student organizations about the Senate’s efficacy in reacting to significant events – such as the vandalism that occurred two weeks ago.
Mace also encouraged all senators to attend the town hall assembly, “Elephant in the Room,” on Tuesday evening to support campus diversity initiatives.
SMU Chaplain, Stephen Rankin, addressed the chamber saying that the Senate’s members came to their positions because they are “motivated to make life better at SMU.”
He further said that when one is extremely busy, it’s “tempting to drop your vision and aim for the incremental,” to “focus on the doable.” However, he exhorted the senators to “dream big, tackle the big issues and remember to have courage and endurance.”
Before leaving the podium, Dr. Rankin added another thought: “Your core values shape the way you think about challenges you face,” and that this implies “an inherently spiritual dimension” to one’s thought process.
He asked the senators to think about from where their “core values” are derived, and that he is open to listen to any one of them individually, adding that he “count[s] it a holy privilege to have such conversations.”
Next, SMU Program Council representatives Haley Finkenbinder and Lillian Foster talked about their organization’s recent success this semester with events such as the Block Party and Park ‘N Party, and screenings of films The Avengers and The Five-Year Engagement.
Further, they discussed their plans for forthcoming events: SMU Saloon, in which the Hughes-Trigg Ballroom will be “turned into Billy Bob’s”; Sweet and Greet, in which SMU athletes and other students will bond over frozen yogurt; and float-building for homecoming, which will be in about a month.
Heather Rodenborg, a representative of Perkins School of Theology, addressed the chamber to ask that the money which had been earmarked for a lecturer the school wanted to bring in be given instead to College Hispanic American Students’ (CHAS) effort to bring in a speaker of their own.
The speaker in question is Marlene Esperanza, an Olympic boxer, whom Rodenborg describes as “a role model for overcoming oppression.”
This generosity was motivated by a call for diversity and solidarity at SMU. In Rodenborg’s words, “We are one in Christ, and one in SMU. My brothers and sisters are poor and homeless, are black and Hispanic, are LGBT and straight.”
Thus, concerns over diversity and tolerance at SMU continue to be of great importance to Student Senate and are driving much discussion and policy therein.
The message consistently being laid forth is that all SMU students are united in a collective identity. It must therefore continue to strengthen and promote SMU’s collective unity.
