CHEEKAN WALKAWAY ’18 READS the minutes to the Senate.This week has been a stressful week for many and for many senators; their Senate duties have fallen by the wayside. In fact, there was serious discussion on the Senate mailing list about cancelling this week’s meeting. The decision was made to hold the meeting when the email thread was leaked to Reddit and metal-based accounts chastised their representatives for a seeming lack of dedication to the weighty duties being a senator implies.
Once the last graduate senator waltzed in from doing research 20 minutes late, the meeting finally started off with the approval of a semester’s worth of meeting minute approvals. In a first for the Senate, the motion to waive the reading of the minutes failed 0-26-0. Senator Jeoffstin Etzinius ’18 brought up concerns about how since the RPI email system only provides “a paltry 250 MB of space,” and some senators were unable to receive the minutes sent out by the secretary. Thus, he believed it was necessary for the Senate to hear all the minutes read aloud. A freshman, who was missing a nametag (which was blamed on the lack of an approved budget by the Executive Bored) said, “Wow, it feels like we are in preschool again because it seems that we cannot read for ourselves.” Despite nods from the rest of the Senate in seeming agreement with this sentiment, the minutes were read regardless, page by page.
The minutes were finally approved, an hour after the meeting started. It took a while considering five months of minutes had to be discussed with details being nitpicked at liberty. The chairmen of the Senate committees then proceeded to give their end-of-semester reports. Shirley Ann Temple, chairman of the Student Government Communications committee, discussed how she was appalled that internal Senate communications were so lackluster, as she had received all emails about the minutes. Clearly, she insinuated, if SGC was in charge of all Senate communications, the minutes fiasco from earlier in the meeting would have been a non-issue. The Graduate Council will be looking at this issue as soon as possible. She added that only they have the connections with the Rensselaer Union systems administrators needed.
The chairman of the Web Technologies Group, Etzinius, boasted about the work of his committee and how they delivered tangible products to the RPI student community. The rest of the senators were visibly impressed by the new elections site, even with no core functionality being finished.
After the WebTech report, upon the realization that many Senators had finals to study for and intramural sports to attend, there was a unanimous vote to adjourn the meeting, undoubtedly influenced by the the fact that is was 11 pm and many senators had tests the next morning.
Upon further investigation by The Poly’s Senior Board (while leaving no stone unturned and no personal relationship undamaged), with the assistance of the Union systems administrators, it was discovered that the only correctly spelled emails on the Senate email list were those of the graduate senators. The question remains whether or not the undergrads simply have illegible handwriting or whether there was conspiracy to doctor the official record of the Senate. The investigation into the emails remains open as new facts come to light.