The 16th Undergraduate Senate reconvened Tuesday night for the first meeting of the quarter as they announced that the Elections Commissioner pushed back the spring elections date one week due to lack of interest of candidates for Graduate Student Council.
Changes to student fees
The Senate passed a bill to “Pay Stanford Staff” Amendment, which would allow students to be charged $170 at most for student fees per quarter. According to the Stanford Student Fee process, students could be billed up to $150 in student fees. Frederik Groce, the financial manager of the ASSU and the CEO of SSE, determined that the $150 fee is currently insufficient to cover operating costs, such as Stanford Student Enterprises’ salaries. If students pass the “Pay Stanford Staff” Amendment during the spring ballot, this will raise that $150 threshold to $170. If the $150 limit is not raised, then student groups will experience cuts to compensate and this Fee Statement amendment could be taken off the ballot voted on by the student body.
In the works
The Senate is in the process of updating their bylaws and rules of order to be more inclusive of those who do not identify with the gender binary. They are changing usages of “he/she/his/hers” to “they/their.”
Senator Amartya Das ‘17, the Academic Affairs Committee Chair, met with the Persis Drell, the Dean of the School of Engineering, along with professor Mehran Sahami and others to discuss the training of introductory class teaching assistants.
Senate proxy/returnees
Ben Holston ‘15, who was the Chair of Senate until he went abroad, returned after a quarter in South Africa. Victoria Kalumbi ‘15, who was the Deputy Chair of the Senate, also returned after a quarter abroad.
Peter Wang ‘15 had his first official Senate meeting as the proxy of Andrew Aude ‘16. He’ll be serving on the Communications and Student Life Committees while Aude is abroad.
Congratulatory Resolution
The Senate also passed a Congratulatory Resolution for Sally Dickson, who served as associate vice provost for student affairs and adviser to the president on student life. Dickson has been employed with Stanford since 1987. Dickson was presented with a plaque, in recognition of her contribution to student life, especially in supporting diverse communities across campus. Before joining student affairs staff in 2007, Sally Dickson served as an associate dean of student affairs at the Law School, director of the Office for Multicultural Development, director of campus relations, associate vice provost for faculty development and associate dean of humanities and sciences.
Contact Alexis Garduno at agarduno ‘at’ stanford.edu.