By Amanda Falzon
After hours of laughter, tears from departing seniors and friendly debate, four pieces of legislation were passed on Tuesday night at the last Student Government Association meeting for the 2006 to 2007 academic year.
The first of the four was the Legislative Efficiency Sunset Act, proposed by Carlos Cruz, an SGA senator. He found that the five-sixths rule in voting on legislation was “invaluable” to the 2006 to 2007 session. It was a “sunset to the Legislative Efficiency Act.”
The original act was proposed due to poor attendance in the senate. However, they found it to be undemocratic even though it was necessary for the senate to continue to act in its original purpose. Cruz, along with the senate, agreed that in the new year the five-sixths rule is no longer needed.
“SGA had a cold and we were giving it cold medicine,” Cruz said. “But you don’t need medicine when the cold is gone. It’s a new session, the cold is gone. The senators who didn’t show up didn’t run for re-election.”
Cruz’s second proposal, the Veto Clarification Act, was put on the table because he said the presidential veto provision in the constitution was unclear and left room for abuse of power. It needed to be changed to prevent abuse of power as a result of grammatical errors.
“When the constitution was written, I don’t know how long ago, it was written with a bunch of clerical, technical, grammatical errors that didn’t make sense,” Cruz said.
The amendment was changed to say that the president could not veto anything passed by a two-thirds vote of the full senate, but if a tally was not taken, then the president could exercise executive veto power.
The SGA executive cabinet’s 11th Hour Vice President Selection Act, authored by Pete DiSilvio, the former SGA president whose term ended Tuesday, stated that if there is a vacancy in the office of vice president, the rules committee chair will serve in his or her place until there is an election to appoint a new vice president.
“At the beginning of the year I lost my vice president, Simon Duncanson,” DiSilvio said. “At the time the cabinet and I looked at our constitution, bylaws, policy series, and Robert’s Rules and realized there was at least eight courses of action we could take to choose a vice president, if we were going to choose one at all, which was an option. That is just too much ambiguity. We came up with a system to choose a vice president; we got Russell [Akiyama], the system worked. It only made sense to make the system we came up with the official system.”
The new “official system” now claims that an election must take place within four weeks of the vacancy of vice president, the chair of the meeting cannot be nominated, and the election will take place within the senate.
The Parliamentarian Neutering Act, also written by DiSilvio, was proposed to make sure that the parliamentarian remains neutral and does not get involved in debate or propose legislation.
“The act took away any speaking rights the parliamentarian had,” DiSilvio said. “It also took away voting rights and the ability to be a senator. This will keep anyone from, at least overtly, having an agenda and pursuing it while being the parliamentarian.”
The parliamentarian is considered to be the expert on the rules of SGA. In past sessions, SGA had appointed parliamentarians who were also senators, which led to abuses of power because that appointees would have their own agendas. Now, he or she is to be appointed by the president and is not allowed to be a senator.
Although DiSilvio said SGA did not need a parliamentarian and did not appoint one for this past session, he felt that the senators became more educated on the rules and were able to better themselves rather than relying on someone else to interpret rules for them. It is up to the new president to appoint a parliamentarian or not.
“Some parliamentarians did great jobs, but others were just pushing their agendas,” DiSilvio said. “This year I took that crutch away, no more preacher. The people than went ahead and learned to read on their own. The senate found parliamentary enlightenment. That being said, I don’t know what next year will bring. If they choose to have a parliamentarian, that’s their choice to make, not mine.”
(Jacqueline Hlavenka)
The 2006-2007 Student Government Association senate convenes for the last time. It was the last chance for those senators who are (Jacqueline Hlavenka)