At the Student Senate’s last meeting on Monday, one of the long-debated issues was the approval of the GM Week Handbook as changed by the Rules and Elections Committee. Amendments presented by RNE included an increase in the number of signatures needed to run for Grand Marshal and President of the Union to 750, a ban on campaigning in the dining halls, required use of a name recognized by the registrar’s office on all official forms, and allowing RNE to create any elections sanctions they deem appropriate.
The senators heavily challenged the last change. The amendment seemed to give RNE too much power, it was said. For a time, discussion centered around amending it to encompass only GM Week-related issues, but as the queue continued, debate shifted toward the ban on campaigning in the dining halls. Many senators expressed their concerns that campaigning in the dining halls is important and better than having candidates “dorm storming,” as Senate-E-Board Liaison Nick Wood ’07 put it.
The debate went back and forth on whether being allowed to campaign in the dining hall really mattered or not. Kim Conway ’06, RNE chair, said it was simple enough to get signatures elsewhere. Several senators were mad that Sodexho, the company that manages the food service on campus, was dictating what they can and can’t do and said that the dining halls were prime places for campaigning because they are where most students socialize and congregate other than the Union and classes.
Senators Mike Goldenberg ’06 and Bob Fishel ’07 both challenged the amendment about requiring that candidates use a name that is recognized by the registrar’s office on all forms. Both said it would do a disservice to foreign students with difficult names that are usually changed when they run for office, as well as to those who are known better by common names and nicknames. It was later clarified by those members present from RNE that the names recognized by the registrar’s office would only need to be put on forms and that campaigning and ballot names that would better reflect the candidate can be discussed and dealt with accordingly by RNE.
Allowing party campaigning to begin a week before spring break was also an issue of contention. Several members of the Senate felt that it was too soon and thus unrealistic to begin party campaigning. Members of RNE, however, felt that this discomfort with timing and scheduling should have been brought up earlier in the semester, because schedule changes would affect already-scheduled campaign activities that would be starting next week.
Members of the Senate felt that issues hadn’t been addressed and had serious issues with the proposed changes. Many of the other senators agreed that certain amendments to the handbook were not specific enough. At one point it was suggested that RNE should use last year’s handbook and just change the dates on the schedule, but this idea was not entertained for long.
After motions to approve the handbook as amended by RNE failed and a ten-minute recess was called, RNE members present at the meeting revised the handbook per the debate, removing the amendments about giving RNE power to create sanctions they deem appropriate and revising the name on forms issue, allowing common names and nicknames. The Senate then rejected those changes. Following that, the body approved the handbook, after removing those two amendments and changing the amendment on campaigning in dining halls to specifically allow it, in a 16-3-2 vote.
One other resolution was passed at the meeting. The “Resolution for Fair Off-Campus Housing Practices” was discussed and approved, forbidding Troy Student Housing, RPI Rentals, and their affiliates from advertising their services in the Union or Mueller Center and banning them from posting to the off-campus housing database on the Union website. The resolution states that this ban comes as a result of Troy Student Housing not being truthful in its advertising and repeatedly disregarding the legal rights of RPI students. It passed 17-0-3.
