Student Senate will vote on two pieces of legislation during its last meeting of the semester Tuesday afternoon.
The first bill says that the students of SMU support the DREAM Act. Bill authors say the piece is only meant to be a statement of support.
“We have students here at SMU who are undocumented, and they are top students. They don’t receive federal aid, so they have to be here on some type of scholarship or they’re paying out of pocket,” Co-author Sen. Claudia Sandoval (Lyle) told Senate when the bill was introduced. “And unfortunately when they graduate because they are undocumented, they won’t be able to go and apply for jobs and use that degree. So that’s one of the ways we see this benefiting our students who are here.”
Bill authors collected postcards of support for the DREAM Act from SMU students, although they did not give the exact number collected.
They say this shows that the SMU body supports the Act, which would help undocumented students become active members in their community.
However, some senators plan to vote against the bill because they don’t believe that Senate should be speaking for the student body on such a political issue.
Sen. Rachel Fox (Dedman II) said she plans to vote against the piece. She doesn’t think Senate should be taking stances in controversial issues when there is not an obvious campus consensus, saying, “It’s not our place.”
“If we want to word legislation so that it expresses the political opinion of our single body, great,” she said. “But I will not speak for my constituents when it comes to politics, given how little I know about their preferences and how divided they most likely are on many issues.”
Sen. Alex Ehmke (Dedman II) plans to vote against the bill and gave reasons why he felt that no senator should vote for the bill, regardless of how they feel about the DREAM Act.
“I’m not in support of the bill because I don’t think that Student Senate should be using legislation to comment on national issues on which we can’t affect any change,” he said.
“Furthermore, Senate has no idea how the student body as a whole feels about the DREAM Act, so not one of them can cast a vote in favor of the bill, because that requires that they be able to tell themselves in good conscience that the majority of the students that they represent support it.”
The second bill, which Senate will vote on Tuesday, would change the wording of current Senate policies and procedures regarding the Finance Committee so that it is consistent with the current policies set by that Committee.
Student Senate will not be introducing new legislation at its Tuesday meeting because it is the last meeting before winter break.
The legislative session will resume in January 2011.
