Every Wednesday this summer, five Student Government senators, along with SG President Colorado Robertson and SG Vice President Shannon Bates, have gathered together to tediously examine the documents that govern their procedures.
The SG Summer Planning Committee has been reading through the SG Constitution and by-laws for the past eight weeks, searching for discrepancies and inconsistencies that may cause problems in their operations.
Drew Prestridge, SG senator and SPC chair, said these revisions are essential to keep SG running smoothly.
“Our documents govern what Student Government does and what Student Government does directly effects the student body,” Prestridge said. “After some instances that occurred recently, it became obvious that they needed to be looked at.”
Prestridge said there was confusion concerning the process of the most recent SG elections.
“After the election, a person came forward with complaints about [SG President] Colorado [Robertson]’s procedure,” Prestridge said. “But because there were inconsistencies between our Election Code and our Constitution, we couldn’t even hear it. He wasn’t allowed that privilege, so we failed the student body in that aspect. We want to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
Amanda Gammon, SG senator and SPC vice-chair, said many of the inconsistencies in the documents have been addressed.
“When the wording is a little off, you don’t know where to look or what to follow,” Gammon said. “We’ve made all the documents consistent so we don’t have anymore problems when it comes to actually putting the documents into action.”
Prestridge said the SPC has ironed out the process of applying for funding.
“Students would come to us and ask for funding, and we’d look at finance in the by-laws and become confused,” Prestridge said. “We couldn’t tell students how to apply for money. But we went through it and made it a lot simpler.”
Prestridge said the governing documents haven’t been looked at comprehensively “in a long time.”
—-Contact Katie Kennedy at [email protected]