So now they want to play by the rules -- sort of

The Student Association Senate has scheduled another meeting to replace the one they couldn't hold due to lack of quorum. Here is the relevant text of the notice:

PUBLIC NOTICE
The Student Association of the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
EMERGENCY STUDENT SENATE MEETING
DATE: Sunday, December 10th, 2006
TIME: 6:00pm
LOCATION:
UWM Union Ballroom
2200 E. Kenwood Blvd.
Milwaukee, WI 53211

Agenda First Available on Friday, December 8th, 2006
By emailing: amandav3@uwm.edu
All meetings are open to the general public.
The senate may go into closed session pursuant to Wisconsin State Statute 19.85(1-6)
According to SA Senate Bylaws Article II Section VI, an
Emergency meeting must be held when requested by 5 senators.
"Emergency meetings shall be for the sole purpose of approving SFC or SAC actions..."

In another world, we could just accept this as is and move on. But in the world we have seen so far, it makes sense to post the section of the Senate Bylaws relevant to this situation, namely Article II, Section VI:

Article II -- Meetings

Section 6 -- Emergency Senate Meetings (for those of you following with your own copy of the Senate Bylaws, it's the second Section 6 -- i.e. the one after the Section 6 dealing with the State of the Students Address)

a. Emergency Senate meetings shall be called by the Speaker of the Senate or by the request of 5 senators, in writing, to the Speaker.

b. The agenda shall be written by the Executive Committee.

c. No senator shall be penalized for absences during emergency meetings.

d. There must be at least 48 hours between the time the meeting is called and the meeting itself.

e. Quorum shall consist of 40% of Senate Seats filled.

f. Emergency Senate meetings shall be for the sole purpose of approving SFC or SAC actions or taking up items requiring Senate action due to timelines outside the control of the Student Association.

So, when the meeting in the garage was to be held, it was for "items requiring Senate action due to timelines outside the control of the Student Association" clause that doesn't appear on the notice. Yet, here, the implication of the notice as written is that this clause doesn't exist.

If you want to be around when the Executive Committee creates this agenda, that will be on December 7 (i.e. tomorrow as I write this) at 3:30 p.m. in EG79I, 16 minutes after the Shared Governance meeting. Either there are so few items being covered by Shared Governance that their meeting will be extremely short, or the Executive Committee will have to set the agenda without the input of the Shared Governance Director.

But the big question is this: Why should all the other items wait until the next regular meeting? The only reason they weren't discussed was there was a lack of quorum, and the number who did show up (12) isn't enough for quorum even for an Emergency meeting (16).

As for timeline issues, the Election Commission Formation Act becomes nearly meaningless if not passed now. The Concurrent Service Act can possibly wait, but why should it? The Student Association Senator Award Act could run into problems if its failure to be addressed removes a senator who would have been eligible to remain had it passed. There are constituencies who would argue that these and other measures need to be addressed sooner if not later. Why create a notice that precludes them?