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| At year’s end,
SGA sports trend of absences |
David
Forbes
SGA Beat |
Over the
spring semester, the Student Government Association faced a trend
of rising absences, which ended in the organization having trouble
reaching quorum, according to data gathered SGA minutes.
This trend culminated in the April 15 SGA senate meeting, when 20
senators were absent and the senate barely had enough members to
vote on the four pieces of legislation facing the body that evening.
Senator absences had doubled during the spring semester, rising
from an average of six per meeting in the fall to 12 per meeting
in the spring.
According to senate bylaws in the SGA constitution, senators are
not allowed to miss more than three meetings a semester, though
some absences may be excused. If that rule were strictly applied
to the roster of the senate currently on SGA’s Web site, 15
senators would not be holding office.
“I think in the case of having trouble with [getting enough
members to vote], I think that inhibits our abilities. I don’t
think the senators that are missing are those who contribute a lot
to the organization. Generally the senators missing repetitive meetings
aren’t the authors of legislation or those who speak up at
meetings,” off campus senator Heather A.Robertson said Wednesday.
“So long as we keep a broad base of representatives I think
that we’re still doing our job.”
Dino DiBernardi, advisor to SGA, said Wednesday it was not unusual
for the senate to see a significant decline in membership during
the spring semester but that it was extremely unusual for the senate
to have trouble reaching quorum, or having enough members of the
current senate to convene and vote.
“If student government has stayed up with figures of people
at meetings and programs, generally what happens is that you lose
people but that brings the numbers needed for quorum down. Quorum
is difficult to lose unless people who are still senators in great
numbers choose not to come,” DiBernardi said.
Robertson, who has been in SGA for four years, also said that it
was usual for attendance to drop at the end of the year.
“There do tend to more absences in the second semester, but
some administrations are more expedient about removing people from
the senate who have too many absences,” Robertson said. “It’s
not uncommon for people to get busier in the second semester and
have reasons for missing meetings.”
DiBernardi said some of the trouble could be in record keeping,
if senators who had been removed from SGA were kept on the list
by mistake.
“What I don’t know this year is if the records of the
organization has kept pace with the attendance figures so that people
were notified on a timely basis as to their ineligibility to stay
part of the organization,” DiBernardi said.
“In my interpretation there are some senators in the senate
who have excessive absences, but I don’t know how many of those
are excused,” Robertson said.
SGA secretary Sarah Marie Daughtry could not be reached for comment
at press time. |
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