At the time this article was written, Senate has not officially started for the semester. That being said, I predict Wednesday’s meeting will be a productive and enjoyable one. If you bump into me today, ask me how it actually went. This week’s meeting’s purpose was to discuss the new structural changes with Community Senate. Proposals are still due at 5 p.m. on Sundays, but almost everything else has changed.

Once proposals have come to the Steering Committee on Sunday nights, a decision will be made as to where it goes next. If it is a proposal to start a new club or get additional funding for a club it will go to the Inter-Club Council (ICC). All residence hall proposals for funding an event or to discuss a hall issue will go to the Student Residence Hall Council (SRC).

At the weekly ICC Proposal Meeting and bi-weekly SRC meetings, proposals will be heard and decided upon by the two councils. All members of the community can come to these meetings to voice their concerns or support, but the final decision is made by consensus of the council, barring appeals.

The ICC will be made up of:

the ICC chairperson

the Senate Treasurer

the Senate Secretary

the 6 Club Representatives:

Awareness Clubs

Social Clubs

Publications Clubs

Religious Clubs

Athletic Clubs

Educational Clubs

Two Senators At Large

And the SRC will be made up of:

the SRC chairperson

the Senate Business Manager

the Senate Vice President

the nine Residential Hall Representatives:

Apartments North

Apartments South

Alternative houses

Binford hall

Mary Hobbs hall

Milner hall

Bryan hall

Shore hall

English hall

Two Senators At Large

Issues and budgetary concerns larger than either council along with appeals will be brought to the full Senate floor to discuss. This is to open up the Senate time to discuss in greater detail larger issues facing the college.

We are sorry for the inconvenience, but we hope that these changes will facilitate more discussions on issues facing the college more so than has been typical in Senate over the past few years. We want to move away from Senate being simply a bank and instead take real issues head on.

These changes are temporary, in that we will review the process at the end of the semester and then decide if more was accomplished this way. If so, we will move to adopt these changes in our bylaws so that they become regular practice for future years.

Hopefully this will inspire more interest in Senate’s activities by the greater student body encouraging everyone to get more involved. We expect a lot of good debate to come out of these changes and plan on bringing administrators, staff, and faculty to more Senate meetings to discuss things such as the SLRP, Master Planning, college budget process, and more.