While the majority of University students were at home cooling off in the kiddy pool, newly elected members of the Summer Senate Committee dove into their duties of allocating nearly $5,000 of student-paid incidental fees to University student groups.
The six senators who volunteered for the Summer Committee hit their share of potholes over the summer as they learned the ropes, mostly without the guidance of an experienced senator. Meeting the attendance requirement, holding mandatory office hours and learning how to conduct the meetings themselves were just some of the issues that plagued summer senate this year.
Many of the offenses were a result of inexperience, ASUO President Adam Walsh said.
“I’m disappointed with the attendance records … but everyone was new, and there were no returning senators, so they were without leadership as far as senate goes ,” he said.
Walsh said it is difficult for senators to make educated decisions without yet knowing the responsibilities of the senate, and that the lack of discussions and questions about allocating fees “stems from a lack of experience and not knowing what to ask .”
The Green Tape Notebook is the ASUO student government rules guide. According to the Notebook, several of the summer senate’s violations, such as not holding office hours and not having two-thirds of the senators in attendance at meetings, constitute grounds for termination if a student were to file a grievance. But while the option to file a grievance remains open for students who feel the malfeasance constitutes termination or other reprimand, Walsh said he will not be doing so simply because this is not regular school-year senate and all of the senate members were new.
“I just think that the punishment doesn’t fit the crime, personally. But if any incidental fee-paying student feels it does, they have the right to (file a grievance),” Walsh said. “If this behavior happened during the school year it would be a different story. There were extenuating circumstances, but if it happened during the regular year, it would be unacceptable because the students are all here .”
Walsh said that he is not condoning the behavior, and that he will work to combat the problems summer senate faced this year for the future.
“I will be suggesting some things to try and find out what works. It would be wise in the future to have an experienced senator come to the meetings, but it is the job of the senators to make a recommendation for an experienced senator to help out ,” Walsh said.
Walsh said that it does not make sense to have a summer senate on which everyone is new, but explained the difficulty in combating that problem when only two senators are returning from last year.
“It’s difficult because summer senate is a voluntary thing” and an unpaid position, he said.
Every year there is usually a finance retreat in October that introduces finance committee members and senators to the finance process, but this does not help summer senators, who conduct meetings and allocate incidental fees without training.
Although it is not the job of the Executive to address such problems, Walsh said he will be looking into a solution for future Summer Senate Committees.
Senator Sara Hamilton was the only senator to comment on how she thought summer session went and what lessons were learned. She said in an e-mail that she recognized the inability to ask “tough questions when faced with tough decisions.”
“I think this becomes more apparent when examining the voting records, which show all motions passed unanimously,” the e-mail said.
Hamilton agreed with Walsh that the summer session’s problems stemmed mostly from “inexperience and poor communication,” which eventually led to poor organization, but she refused to call summer session a failure because the goal of conducting the meetings was met.
“It’s important to make these realizations in hindsight, to accept the situation as a learning experience, and to make the commitment to do better in the future,” Hamilton said.
Since one meeting was canceled because senators could not make two-thirds quorum, each senator is charged with one absence. Senators Tyrel Love and Hamilton each had two absences and Spencer Crum had four. These senators could technically lose their positions on full-year senate for non-fulfillment of duties if a grievance goes to Constitution Court, the ASUO Court of Appeals.
The last summer session senate meeting heard special requests from the Nontraditional Student Union, the Women’s Law Forum and the House of Film, a recognized but not fee-funded group. In all, $250.54 was allocated to two programs. Requests from the Chinese Student Association and the House of Video were postponed because no representatives attended the meeting to make their case.
“I hope this summer is a lesson to (future) summer senators,” Walsh said.

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