Senate Meeting: 8.30.09

As promised, here is a recap of the proceedings from this past Sunday's meeting. Enjoy:

Hi Everyone,

My name is Ryan Korn. I was an Undergraduate Senator for the Class of 2010 two years ago, and I attended this week’s Senate meeting as Mike’s proxy while he was at a wedding in Ohio.

In brief, three major things occurred at this meeting: the reports of executive officers who worked over the summer, the confirmations of several interim Senators, and the passage of a bill that would allow Undergraduate Senators to view executive appointees’ application documents.

Though the impeachment charges against Treasurer Handverger were not discussed at the meeting, they were voted out of the Committee on Rules and Privileges (CRP), the “executive committee” of the Senate that is composed of the Chairmen and Vice-Chair of the various Senate Committees. In other words, the charges are not baseless. A special session of the Undergraduate Senate will be held later this week (Tuesday night) on the matter.

With regards to the officer reports, all that I heard sounded exemplary. I know several of the appointees personally, and they seemed to be doing a fine job in their positions.

As for the appointment of the interim Undergraduate Senators, I voted in favor of one, Katie Ryan for CAS Senator, because she had been vetted and strongly recommended by the CRP. However, I abstained from voting on the others, well qualified though they appeared. Though the Senate felt that it would be best to have additional Senators approved in time for the impeachment proceedings and so voted to bypass the CRP, I did not feel that was appropriate. Moreover, I felt it might cause the impeachment proceedings to be less fair.

Finally, the bill allowing the Undergraduate Senate to view executive appointee documents. President MacCracken’s complained that the Senate had not compromised or worked with him on it, that his office wouldn’t be able to provide other appointee information such as interviews, and that the forms contained sensitive information such as GPAs, student ID numbers, etc. After the debate, I thought that all of those reasons were irrelevant, except for the last. However, after the bill was amended to have those parts redacted and President MacCracken continued to oppose the bill, I began to view his remarks as a statement of executive privilege. I voted in favor of the bill, and it passed 10 to 2.

I hope this was helpful to everyone following the blog. Mike will be back next time!