The first student senate meeting of the semester kicked off with the inauguration of the new Law Senator, Ryan Storey. He will replace former Law Senator Jason Sansone.
The membership committee announced that the majority of senate vacancies have been filled.
Only one Cox seat remains open at this time due to a last-minute resignation.
Student Body President Austin Prentice will inaugurate the following new members next week: Meadows Senator Katherine Castillo, Dedman II Senator Addison Fontein, Dedman I Senators Michelle Ko and Caleb Pool, Cox Senator Vier Omar, Asian-American Chair Tomin Kozhimala, Lyle Senator
Emily McIntosh and Membership Chair Anthony McAuliffe. McAuliffe served as a Dedman II Senator last semester.
Prentice also announced that the Senate is looking into creating a new seat to represent the graduate student population.
This way, he explained, the graduate students would have a voice in the senate and a person to express concerns and complaints to.
Graduate students will elect the position, tentatively called the graduate affairs officer, during the upcoming spring elections.
“While any student can be in senate, in reality it has been a predominantly undergraduate-filled chamber,” he said. “The graduate affairs officer position would be elected by grad students, and he or she would sit directly on exec committee of Student Senate.”
Prentice also hopes that this will encourage greater graduate student voting turnout for other Senate positions in the upcoming elections.
On another note, the scholarship committee has worked to revise its application process.
Speaking for scholarship committee chair Ramon Trespalacios, First-Year Senator J.D. Mahaffey explained that applications will now be accepted electronically.
Mahaffey said that one of the issues with hard-copy applications was privacy and the sheer amount of paper.
Also, he explained that sometimes students would “cheat” the deadline because they could manually submit the application.
“[We are focusing] on efficiency and making everything more confidential and improving the [application process],” he said.
Student Senate meets every Tuesday.at 4 p.m.
