SA Senate Meeting November 12: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

It is good to see the Student Association Senate functioning in the expected manner again . . . or is it?

Six vacant Senate seats were filled, which is a good sign. Most of them, as expected, are people invested in the status quo, so the chances of radical change taking place are slim. In this case, however, the process as outlined appears to be working, so I am treating this as a net plus.

The proposed Student Court nominee was not taken up, as she was unable to attend. However, a new Shared Governance Director was appointed and confirmed: Brandon Decker. His confirmation places him in the list of people for whom the separation of powers, were it to be enforced, would be definitively forced to choose either his Senate seat or his new directorship.

Executive Order
This is an amazing loophole so large you can drive a herd of mastadons through it. The Order "ordered" Ms. Prahl to "use any and all private funds" to obtain legal counsel. By framing it as an executive action, it was packaged as a Special Order. The Senate Bylaws, Article II, Section 3d states that Private Account Expenditures are normally done by automatic consent, unless a senator objects, in which case it is pulled and moved to New Business. But it was framed as an Executive Order, which filed it under an executive action, not a Private Account Expenditure automatic consent item. This supposedly triggered Article II, Section 3g:

All executive actions to be included in Special Orders shall follow a specified procedure. The President shall report on the executive actions and upon the completion of the President's report, all items shall be included in t a consent item and approved at that time, unless a senator objects to an item. The Senate may overturn an executive action by a 2/3 majority vote.

By doing it this way, Article V, Section 3b of the Executive Bylaws, which states that "This $2000 [minimum amount in the account] shall be used only for emergency purposes, with approval of 2/3 of the Senate" was bypassed. So now, instead of it taking a 2/3 vote to approve the expenditure, it took a 2/3 vote to prevent the expenditure.

This creates a new potential avenue for exploitation: Fiat by executive action. The President could, if she were unscrupulous, simply decree her will by executive action, and dare the Senate to come up with the 2/3 necessary to overturn it. This would require a more independent Senate than what I have witnessed to date.

Separation of Powers at stalemate
Antwan Jones' Separation of Powers act failed, but the passages in the Senate Bylaws that prohibit senators from serving on the Cabinet are still there, with the dilatory motion to strike them tabled. The idea was that a compromise position was to be drafted, but we will see what compromise can be made.

Senate Finance Committee bylaws approved
The Senate Finance Committee Bylaws were approved. One of the more interesting elements of this process is that it became clear that the senators who sit on SFC don't get to draft them. Rather, they are created by another body who forwards them to University Legal to insure that state laws are being followed, and then they are sent to the full Senate for approval by a 2/3 vote. The problem is that there are 13 members of SFC, including the Vice President, so it is possible for every member of SFC to vote against the bylaws but still have them approved, forcing the people who voted against the bylaws to operate under them.

Ban on breastfeeding in Union offices?
When the "Registered Student Organization Rights Act of 2006" came up for a vote, one of its authors, Senator Dan Bahr, lobbied for it by saying he had passed by one of the University offices and saw a topless woman breastfeeding her child there. This, plus other unspecified inapporpriate activity, was the reason that he wanted the Senate to recommend that the Union Policy Board change its policy on student organization membership and adda clarifying passage that Union offices are intended to be used for administrative purposes only. I will not comment on what Mr. Bahr thought he was doing by peering into Union offices not his own. Instead, I will focus on more salient points. Why even bring this up before the Senate? The other author of this legislation was Robert Stueber, the current chair of the Union Policy Board, and Senator Russel Scott is the UPB vice-chair. Are they so impotent within their board that they could not have brought this matter to the UPB themselves? The document that is being recommended for change is the Student Organization Manual, which is a publication of the Student Activities Office, not the UPB, and does not derive its material from the UPB, so how do the authors and sponsors intend to affect anything by asking the UPB to do anything? In addition, the University Student Court has ruled that the UPB is not a part of Student Association, so what benefit is gained by having the Student Association Senate express their opinion? And while Mr. Bahr in the Q&A session expressed that it was not the intention of the legislation to ban advisors, checking of e-mail or Facebook, other standard uses of the office, enforcement of this policy would not fall to him, but to the UPB, of which he is not a member. This matter passed the Senate and we will see if the UPB chooses to do anything about it.

Conclusion
Overall, procedures were followed (maybe not the correct ones in all cases, but at least they were documented), and the usual pile of legislation got through. But the fact that a new loophole has been created and exploited is ugly, and needs to be dealt with.