Session of September 10th, 2020
Minutes Recorded by: McKenzie Craycraft, Secretary
Visitors: Jonathan Edwards, Tyler Hudson, Stephen Foster, Nathan Moyes
Call to Order at 11:01 AM
Senator prays Gowing
Roll Called
Minutes approved at 11:04 AM.
Officer Reports
None
Committee Reports
Senator Gowing: There is a possibility of rolling the Elections committee and Constitution committee together into one committee.
Special Business
None
Old Business
Senator Gowing: Motion to bring the amendment Voting District Act of 2020 to the floor
Approved
VP Murphy: This has gone through a 10 class day ratification period. A second vote must be done by 2/3 majority. It will then become enacted. This bill will change how representation is done. There will be more than two senators allowed per floor.
Senator Gowing: Technically, four of us should not have been here as senators by the old ruling. This is being fixed. VP Murphy: Any discussion about this?
Senator LaQuey: It is about dang time we did this!
Senator Avent: Motion to bring this amendment to a vote.
Amendment approved
New Business
Senator Avent: Motion to bring bill Cold Hard Cash Act to the floor
Approved
Senator Gowing: What does it mean by $20, is this per person or for all volunteers?
Senator Avent: Only $20 shall be allocated.
Senator Anderson: I like the fire tornado idea; I do not see it necessary to allocate money to clean the freezer.
Senator Willis: Does this mean you are going to help clean?
Senator Anderson: I would love to help, just let me know when.
Senator Gowing: As a point of clarification for constitution, you cannot put in mandatory things for if a bill does not pass.
Senator Millwood: I will be happy to help senator Anderson with freezer.
Senator Willis: Motion bring to a vote.
Senator Gowing: As chair of constitution, this bill is against the constitution, the bill does not pass, that renders the bill… completely no.
PPT LaQuey: Motion to amend this bill by sticking to the comments about the fire tornado and replacing the $20 with $20 in gift cards. We will need the entire floor to vote to before we clarify.
Senator Dittman: Instead of having forced participation, whoever is upset about this just help to clean it.
Senator Willis: Are you saying you were going to help?
Senator Gonzalez: To quote Josiah Wilson, “No.” I told you last week I was going to help clean the dang the freezer!
VP Murphy: It seems like there is a lack of communication.
Senator Avent: Seeing that this bill has accomplished its purpose, move to table it indefinitely.
PPT LaQuey: I think we should just vote it down. Motion to bring bill to a vote.
Approved
Bill not approved
Announcements
VP Murphy: I have been in contact with Laura Cobb from Bon Appetit, they will be coming into session next week September 17th. Please reach out and speak to others. They are happy to be here; their goal is to help us as much as possible. Please remember to be respectful and gracious.
Senator Anderson: We have a lot of budgets submitted, six of which are asking for more than $500. I am scheduling these presentations on Saturday. Each budget will be given 15 minutes to present. We will meet in the YAC cave.
Senator Willis: We are trying to clean out the freezer in the YAC cave, we are planning to do that today. I will be there; I hope everyone can be there. Check the GroupMe.
Senator Avent: Even though we are just cleaning out the freezer today, we might still need the fire tornado.
Dean Steve: Dr. Morgan has told me we need a replacement for the Student Senate representative on the university’s Information & Technology committee.
VP Murphy: Do you have a time and date for when these meetings would happen?
Dean Steve: It would be two to four times a year to discuss changing policy. If you are interested, please see me after this.
VP Murphy: You said it does not have to be the VP?
Dean Steve: It just says Student Senate representative. I think it can be anyone who is a part of Senate.
VP Murphy: Anyone have any points or people to recommend?
Senator Avent: I recommend myself.
PPT LaQuey: Can we get a quick rundown of what the committee does?
Senator Avent: We should wait to discuss this in open forum.
Open Forum
Senator Gowing: There has been discussion about rolling Election and Constitution into one committee. The main reasoning is these two committees work closely together. Elections do not have much to do in the fall this would help to share the load. Elections don’t do much in the fall and constitution doesn’t do much in the spring.
PPT LaQuey: I think this is a great idea, the constitution can often over right things. I motion to refer the matter to the Constitution committee to come up with amendments or amend to the bylaws on this issue.
Senator Dittman: This conversation has happened a year or two ago. It always gets dropped. As the only person in elections, I definitely see the need of numbers and need to fuse together. We will have one less chair. It is just a detail of what to call the committee and how many people do we need to qualify as a committee. Some groups have seven and other have less because of the number of subcommittees. Constitution is worse in the fall but there have been some issues that happen in the spring. That would a lot if these things happen again.
Senator Gowing: This reminds me of the minimum membership numbers for committees, I can understand where they are coming from, but they seem as helpful as the voting districts that we just amended. I have considered fixing that, because the minimums are kind of annoying. The only committee that exists completely is student life.
VP Murphy: Wrong, actually none of them have enough people. This matter has had a motion and a second to be moved to your committee.
Senator Dittman: Instead of doing a voting by numbers, consider voting by percentiles. That way 10% goes one place and another goes another place.
VP Murphy: We could leave it to the PPT, they appoint people to their committees.
Senator Gowing: I need more people in my committee.
VP Murphy: Welcome to every committee’s issue.
Senator Dittman: Motion to refer that matter to the Constitution committee.
VP Murphy: There are two different matters, combining the Constitution and Elections and fixing how the minimum number of committees is written. All in favor of referring these matters to the Constitution committee.
Approved
PPT LaQuey: It seems as if there is interest in Avent doing this, I nominate him.
Senator Avent: I accept this nomination.
Senator Avent approved for position
Dean Steve: I have already informed Dr. Morgan.
VP Murphy: I had a meeting with our student body president, part of what executive cabinet is doing is reaching out to other groups who have been affected by COVID. One group is the athletes. She went and spoke with them and asked if we could help with that. They want to get t-shirts. Which seems reasonable, but there are very many of them. This adds up quickly. She suggested we could come here and ask for funding.
Senator Dittman: Does this include rugby and frisbee?
VP Murphy: This does not include rugby and frisbee, because they are just clubs.
Senator Avent: This may seem a little bit funny, but how is this going to help the athletes, do they not have clothes?
VP Murphy: It’s just something to do as consolation for losing their season. This isn’t specifically for athletics, it’s not just athletes who have been hit hard. We just need to figure out what is most effective for reaching students across campus.
Senator McClain: First off that is a good idea, prices will go down, my question is will they be team specific or generic?
Secretary Craycraft: I can speak to the design of the shirt. We are planning on having one of the basketball players design it. Our initial thought, if we go through with this, is modeled after TCU’s volleyball program. They gave their athletes shirts that said “EQUALITY.” As athletics we are taking time and seeing what we can do to speak out for equality as a department. We are combining these two ideas. Again, none of this is set in stone, but just a general idea. As far as I know they are not putting any other logos on it.
Senator Dittman: Will the exec cab be donating the money, or will it be like STING where we ask for our logo on it?
VP Murphy: It sounds like it is just a bill for giving them the money, it is not being run like a sponsorship.
Senator Anderson: Point on logistics, it is the exec cab that is mostly sponsoring this, and Senate is giving some money. Supposing the t-shirts were under $20, I recommend that Senate sponsors 10% and if we could get it below $10, we could up it to 20%. This would be about $500, which is the same as sponsoring a club.
PPT LaQuey: We are running out of time in this session.
Senator Gonzalez: Does Senate have the ability to show they stand for a specific cause? What can we as a cohesive body to reach out to the rest of campus to say we are all in this together? How can we increase campus culture?
Senator Dittman: I like the idea that Gonzalez has brought out. From the small amount of detail that they shirt will show. People might say they are so equalized, but only the athletes are getting the shirts. We could show we are equal, and all impacted. We don’t want to say the athletes are higher up because they bring more money to the school. Making the engineers who are doing senior design feel like they bring nothing. We bring stuff to certain people making others feel unwanted. We could design stuff and if we sponsor it let everyone have it. The athletes are only one group, as senate we represent all of LETU and not just a small group.
Citizen Morris: To add to Senator Dittman, I think that is a great idea, athletics does represent 20%, I think it should sponsor with Senate, but we are all in this together, from a student’s perspective you could show that the shirt was specifically designed by the athletes. We could put this on a bulletin.
PPT LaQuey: We like the idea the idea of sponsoring something for the athletes, we should look into what each department would like. Let’s see if we can’t do something like that. We can toss them to Gabe to make them happen.
Senator McClain motions to adjourn.
Senator Gowing seconds.
Meeting Adjourned at 11:47 AM