Tuesday night’s Student Senate meeting started with 66 Senators present but ended with 47.
When debate on a bill limiting when candidates can campaign for a Student Government election was cut short for a vote, several Students Party Senators left the chambers.
Right before exiting, Minority Party Leader Max Stein said, “I doubt the presence of quorum.”
For the Senators to pass bills, a majority of the total membership of the Senate must be present. This establishes quorum.
However, during the summer semesters, a majority of the active members of the Senate must be present. Senate President Aundre Price said there are 86 active members in the Senate and 44 must be present to vote.
After the meeting, Stein said the students were not being represented well.
“I felt the Senate was not acting in the best interest of the students,” he said.
This was the final vote on the election campaigning revisions which proposed to redefine campaigning to encompass election-specific material that solicits support for a candidate. Campaigning would start one week before elections and end when the polls close.
The revisions added campaign activities, which is intentional support of a party or candidate that does not solicit votes, and would start four weeks before the election and end when the polls close.
Several students showed up to the meeting to voice their opinions on the bill, but most of them did not talk, instead they held up signs, like Mohamad Shatara, whose sign read, “I want to tell you about elections, but Christina Bonarrigo says I can’t.”
Budget and Appropriations Committee chairwoman Christina Bonarrigo, an author of the bill, said the bill is just condensing the campaigning period.
“This bill doesn’t limit free speech, it limits campaigning year round so Student Government can focus on results,” she said.
During the meeting, author and Judiciary Committee chairman Cayman Weimer amended the bill to include social media posts as campaign material. He said the original intent of these revisions were because it was too vague, and these are just clarifying any confusion.
The Senators also passed a bill that proposed to change the finance codes. That bill will be heard again in the Senate next week.
Contact Samantha Shavell at sshavell@alligator.org.
