A human sunflower, a creepy clown and an oppressive cop walked into the EMU Board Room Wednesday night. That’s not the premise of a bad joke – those were among the costumes student senators wore to the Halloween Senate meeting.
Sen. Lee Warnecke dressed as a snowboarder and Sen. Lauren Zavrel was in full punk gear with a mohawk. Zavrel described what she was wearing as “myself, but hotter.” Sen. Nate Gulley said he was dressed as Chris Turk from “Scrubs.”
Sen. Billy Hatch wore black and white striped stockings, black pumps, white daisy dukes, and a black ’80s wig.
Senate President Athan Papailiou, who limited his festive attire to a bright orange polo shirt, opened the meeting by asking all senators to stay focused on business and wrap up the meeting quickly. The Senate adjourned at 8:59 p.m., less than two hours after the meeting began, making Wednesday’s session the quickest of the term.
The Senate allocated a total of $2,537 in surplus funds during the meeting. Students for Choice received $250 to send a representative to the West Coast Feminist Leadership Conference. The Veterans Student Family Association was allocated $530 for a two-sided banner the group will use during Veterans Awareness Week next week.
The Asian Pacific American Student Union, represented at the meeting by members of the group including former co-director Chii-San SunOwen, now ASUO vice president, was allocated $757 to continue producing the group’s newsletter. SunOwen said a miscommunication last year led to the group having to go into debt to produce the newsletter at the end of spring term.
The only surplus requests that provoked debate came from Assault Prevention Shuttle. The group offers free rides to students who might be in uncomfortable or unsafe situations at night. Two years ago, 26 percent of its budget went unspent. As a result the groups’ budget was cut, and current leaders will not have enough money to maintain vans or buy gas for the entire year.
Sen. Neil Brown said it sounded as if the group was in a situation similar to Ad Club, which has no funding for the year because last year’s leaders didn’t go through the budgeting process.
“We’re concerned about the precedent. What we have to establish is this isn’t just you trying to increase your budget by subverting the (budgeting) process,” Brown said.
Senate Vice President Donnie Kim said a precedent was set when the Senate turned away Ad Club, and the body had to follow that precedent regardless of the group asking for funds.
SunOwen said the purpose of the two groups and their circumstances should not be compared. “There’s a big difference between APS and Ad Club,” she said, noting that special circumstances including a low benchmark last year left the shuttle with a much smaller budget.
Eventually, senators allocated $1,000 for van maintenance but decided to postpone a vote on money for gas or advertising expenses. The group still has nearly $3,000 in its gas budget, which is half of what it spent on gas last year.
Matthew McDaniel, a man who wants the University to rescind the doctoral degree of a man who he alleges sterilized tribal women in Thailand, returned to the Senate with his wife Michu.
McDaniel again made his case that the Thai government sterilizes Akha women without consent and under the influence of anesthetics. He said the government continues this practice and uses the University degree to legitimize it.
McDaniel translated for his wife, who speaks Akha, and quoted her as asking, “Who told somebody they could get a degree here to go and sterilize us?”
At the end of the meeting, Brown announced that he will resign after this term. He has accepted a post-graduate fellowship with the U.S. State Department. He will be working with the European Union in Brussels, Belgium.
Brown said he would like to stay on the Senate for as long as possible, but since he is a finance senator he will leave when a replacement is found. Whoever takes his seat will have a steep learning curve to prepare for the budgeting process winter term, he said.
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