Last Thursday, the Student Senate met behind closed doors to amend their bylaws after publicly confirming a few appointments. The Senate unanimously confirmed the appointment of G. Matthew Ezovski to both the positions of Judicial Board chair and chief judicial advisor for the 2005 term and also appointed members to the Campus Safety Committee.
The current chair of the Judicial Board, Suba Ganesan ’06; and David J. Fannon ’05, vice chair of the Judicial Board, both appeared at the Senate meeting to speak in support of Ezovski’s confirmation. According to Ganesan, while Ezovski was not the only applicant for the position, the J-Board’s selection committee unanimously chose him. Fannon also spoke highly of Ezovski, urging the Senate to vote to confirm him as chief judicial advisor and not just as the chair of the Judicial Board.
The Senate confirmed Ezovski as J-Board chair by unanimous consent and as chief judicial advisor by a unanimous vote. Grand Marshal Michael Dillon said of Ezovski in a subsequent interview, “He is the person who should be in that position without any question.”
After appointing several senators to the Campus Safety Committee, the Senate closed the meeting by unanimous consent. According to Dillon and the unapproved minutes, the Senate spent the remainder of the almost three hour meeting discussing proposed bylaw changes.
Several of the changes were to correct typographical errors in the bylaws. According to Dillon, these hadn’t been fixed before since people “have said it’s unclear how to amend our bylaws,” calling the process “complicated and arduous” himself. These were all passed.
Another set of amendments sought to change the pronoun “he” in the bylaws to “she”, “they”, or “he/she.” None of these motions passed.
The rest of the amendments were clarifications, additions, or changes. The Senate officially created the positions of Senate webmaster and Senate historian. It did not pass an amendment that called for a randomly chosen Senator to be given the duty of entertaining the Senate for a few minutes at the end of every meeting, or earlier in the meeting if the Senate so voted.
Among the other motions that failed was one that would have officially changed the procedures the Senate uses to amend their bylaws. The amendment proposals made at last week’s meeting all followed a generic motion from the week before that proposed changing the bylaws, without specifying which ones. Under the proposed motion that failed, following a majority vote of the Senate in favor of a new amendment, the Rules and Elections Committee would report on its constitutionality, and then a 2/3 vote of the Senate would be needed for the change to become effective.
Dillon was disappointed to see this motion changing the amendment process fail and said that he thought it failed because people wanted to leave. He hoped that it will come back up. He also said that in general, “there’s going to be more bylaw changes in the future. This opened up a can of worms.”
The GM said that he felt that the meeting primarily focusing on bylaw changes was “inappropriate” as a committee should have been formed to look into the amendments if there were going to be as many as there were. He said, “We will not have a motion to amend the bylaws again,” in the same manner as the one passed a couple of weeks back if he can help it. While he didn’t think he could overrule the motion alone, he believed that enough of the Senate would support his opposition to a motion that could to another meeting being similar to last week’s meeting.
In addition to recommending a Chief Judicial Chair to the Senate, the J-Board’s selection committee is also responsible for evaluating candidates for regular positions on the board. According to Fannon, the committee is accepting nominations for regular J-Board member positions until November 5. Applications and other information can be found at their website, http://jboard.union.rpi.edu/.
