At Monday night’s formal meeting, the Student Government Association (SGA) filled seven open senator positions and approved over $13,000 in finance requests.
The newly-elected senators are Matthew Lerman as a graduate senator, Joseph Sciuto as Watson Hall senator, Dillon Pusateri as Building F senator and Elaine O’Rourke as a commuter senator. Kathy Bash, Nathaniel Desing and Mia Graziani were elected as freshman senators.
The motion to elect Bash initially failed with a vote of 9-10 after Chadwick Burdick, vice president of campus outreach, shared his concerns.
“We pride ourselves on being very professional and that helps us with administration, and I see that if we elect senators who I don’t believe are fully up to our standard with that, we can definitely risk our reputation,” Burdick said.
Senator Cale Walker motioned to have senators vote for freshman senators using paper ballots. The motion passed with one opposing vote from Logan Tupper, vice president of finance, and one abstention. After Desing and Graziani were elected, the Senate voted to rescind the initial vote for Bash; after the second round of votes, Bash was elected with a vote of 12-7.
After Monday night’s appointments, one freshman, one graduate, two commuter and four building (North Hall and Buildings A, B and E) senator positions remain open. Elizabeth Hernandez, vice president of student and academic affairs, said that there have been more applicants for the freshman senator positions, specifically, in previous elections.
“It’s very rare that we have an amount [of applicants] that doesn’t fulfill all the positions,” Hernandez said. “So, I think that’s where we need to reflect on our recruitment process and how we reach out to the right senators and the right students on campus.”
SGA approved a total of $13,572.37 between eight finance requests. These requests were from Math Club, Men’s Club Volleyball, Men’s Club Soccer, Wrestling Club, Student Organization of Latinos/Hispanics and Allies (SOL), Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance (FMLA) and Exercise Science Society.
SGA submitted their own capital request of $704.12 for tables and chairs to help make their office “more welcoming” to students not in SGA, according to Tupper.
“We feel that it’s very necessary for the office to not rebrand, but to make ourselves more available to students,” Tupper said.
SGA’s next formal meeting will be on Oct. 22 at 7:30 p.m. in the SSC Theatre.
