Student Body President Thomas Kincaid challenged the Senate yesterday during the first general meeting of the semester to focus on how the body can better serve its constituents.

Kincaid earmarked three issues that he saw as particularly important challenges facing the body – diversity, the appropriations process and student group recognition and support.

“We are blessed to have a very empowered Student Senate at SMU,” he said. “Along with that empowerment, comes the responsibility to successfully use the authority entrusted to the students. In recent years, our execution on behalf of the students of our responsibility has been lacking.”

To assess what improvements need to be made and develop a plan of action, he announced the creation of three task forces to tackle the issues.

The diversity task force, which will be led by Senate Diversity Chair Jared Dovers, will be charged with assessing the needs of the minority community at SMU and how student government can help them meet those needs.

“When running for office, [we] often talk about supporting diversity and minority student groups,” he said. “It is time to do more than what we have been. We must begin to identify and understand our own internal problems relating to diversity.”

The appropriations task force, led by long-time appropriations committee member Clayton Smith, will determine improvements that can be made to the annual budget process and appropriations standards. Kincaid challenged the task force to create a system that assures an appropriate use of student dollars, a fairness to all student groups and consideration of any of the long-term consequences of the appropriations.

“Our process is presently too cumbersome, too bureaucratic and too difficult,” he said. “By having a new system designed by students who use it I am confident we will create a better, fairer and more usable system of student dollar allocation.”

The student group recognition and support task force, led by Senator Andrew Baker, will examine the current two-tier system of student organizations (chartered and listed) and create a way of managing student organizations based on size, responsibilities and privileges of each student group.

The task forces will each be made up of senators and members of the SMU community involved in their respective issues. They will report their findings and recommendations to the Senate over the course of the semester.