In a more than four-hour meeting Wednesday, the Student Senate voted to reduce a four-page bill outlining guidelines for the year to less than one page.
Senate Bill 12, meant to establish criteria for senators’ fulfillment of duty, guidelines for senator conduct and protocol for funding groups through the Programs Finance Committee, was whittled down by senators until it contained only rules of procedure and criteria for the fulfillment of duties.
At the conclusion of the meeting, Sen. Kyle McKenzie expressed disappointment.
“Tonight was absolutely ridiculous,” he said. “This Senate undermined its sole duty tonight.”
ASUO President Jared Axelrod stayed through the night, thumbing through the Green Tape Notebook and making points of clarification. He informed the Senate there were rules and guidelines already in place for what it was discussing.
“Senators, if you want to do something like this, the chance to do this is at the benchmark hearing,” he said, referring to the removal of the last section, which dealt with finance guidelines.
The guidelines suggested by the Senate Finance Committee included refusing to give groups automatic increases if they don’t spend 90 percent of their budgets. It also included a stipulation that, for consideration of an automatic increase, a group would need to have fund-raised 50 percent of its budget.
Sen. Chii-San SunOwen criticized the finance guidelines as well as the conduct guidelines, which would have outlawed food during Senate meetings and would have prevented senators from answering their cell phones during meetings.