The ASSU Undergraduate Senate passed four bills Tuesday, enacting the first part of an ASSU fiscal reform package, instituting Senate office hours, encouraging the establishment of Senate archives and standardizing bill nomenclature. The Senate also appointed 11 more students University committees through an amendment to an earlier appointment bill.
The first half of an ASSU fiscal reform package, authored by Ryan Peacock, sought to clarify definitions for budget items and further outlined the capabilities of the Senate treasurer and Graduate Student Council financial officer and the process for a budget modification veto.
If the Graduate Student Council passes the bill, altering the Association Joint Bylaws, on Wednesday, Peacock will work with Stewart Macgregor-Dennis ’13, Senate treasurer, and Raj Bhandari, the CEO of Stanford Student Enterprises, to draft new budgets for both bodies. Peacock is a graduate student in chemical engineering and executive chair of graduate issues
The Senate passed a bill instituting three hours of Senate office hours per week, excluding dead week and finals week. While the office hours will not start this quarter, senators expressed hope that, once a schedule is created by the Communications Committee, the rotating office hours will begin soon.
The Senate also passed a bill Tuesday encouraging the establishment of the Undergraduate Senate archives. The bill says “attempts shall be made” by Senate Chair Michael Cruz ’12 and the Administration & Rules Committee to establish digital archives for the past 11 Undergraduate Senates.
The last bill passed Tuesday established standard bill nomenclature, which has been changing each year at the discretion of the chair. While the first three bills of the meeting passed unanimously, the bill to establish bill nomenclature passed 14 to 1, with Daniel Khalessi ’13 opposing.
“I don’t really see the point of this when there’s actual stuff that needs to be done on campus,” Khalessi said, expressing frustration that the Senate has continued to focus on internal affairs.
Cruz acknowledged this concern. “There are some things that need to be fixed, but this shouldn’t be the focus of the rest of the year,” he said.
The various Senate committees discussed their plans for the year at Tuesday’s meeting, including a push for a pilot study-abroad program in the Middle East, a bike-safety campaign that would distribute free bike lights, and the potential creation of a “diversity council” similar to the current Frosh Council.
The ASSU executives presented their nominations to the Constitutional Council Tuesday. Nominees David Hoyt ’12, J’vona Ivory ’11 and Samir Siddhanti ’12 will be voted on next week. Those nominees replace three earlier ones after the executives opted for a second application round. (One former nominee, Brianna Pang ’13, is a Daily staffer.)
All funding bills for the evening were passed.
Surveying Student Opinion on Senate Bills
The Senate spent the last part of Tuesday’s meeting discussing a bill on previous notice calling for a method to obtain qualitative and quantitative data on what students think about bills going before the Senate. The bill’s current form suggested an e-mail sent to a new e-mail list notifying students of upcoming bills.
The information would be “purely meant as an extra data point for your consideration,” said Macgregor-Dennis, who authored the bill, when asked by senators how the information might affect the voting process.
Whether or not they agreed with the bill’s sentiment that more student voices would be helpful, many senators raised doubts about the implementation of the bill and questioned if an e-mail survey would elicit fair representation of the student body.
ASSU Vice President Kelsei Wharton ’12 expressed the perspective that “sometimes bills are written and they affect people who have no idea they’re being affected. It does help to have that information disseminated in a way that people can be active.”
“Maybe we need to do more thinking about this,” Macgregor-Dennis concluded about the details of the bill.