Student Senate notebook

Here is what happened in Wednesday's Student Senate meeting

By Erin Sommer

Thursday, December 6th, 2007

SENATE TABLES LEGISLATION TO STAND AGAINST HATE CRIMES

Student Senate voted 25 to 24 to table a resolution to take an “active stance” against hate crimes at the University. The resolution was tabled indefinitely, meaning that Student Senate did not have an obligation to discuss the issue at future meetings.

Jason Oruch, a student senator who wrote the legislation after his fraternity house, Alpha Epsilon Pi, was vandalized with anti-Semitic phrases on Nov. 10, said he was offended that the resolution did not pass.

“Whether or not Senate is going to stand against hate crimes, action is going to be taken,” Oruch said.

Max Schnepper, Glencoe, Ill., junior, and vice president of Alpha Epsilon Pi, a fraternity comprised of Jewish men, said that he felt the fact that Student Senate tabled the resolution was more racist than what happened to the fraternity house.

Student senators who were against the resolution said that they were opposed to hate crimes, but felt that the bill did not have a real value in preventing future hate crimes.

Quinton Cheney, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences senator, said that he felt the resolution “had no real purpose” because simply writing a resolution portrays a lack of ability to actually act against hate crimes.

Mason Heilman, residential senator, said that he was against hate crimes, but he wanted to table the resolution indefinitely, which he called a “back-door” way to fail the bill without causing the negative media attention that might have been associated with failing to pass something saying Student Senate was against hate crimes.

“It was more of a way to ward off the average person thinking that Student Senate was in any way, shape or form for a hate crime,” Heilman said after the meeting.

Heilman said that a task force would have been a better way to respond to the incident.

Oruch said that he wished people with ideas such as this had talked to him before the meeting about them, instead of tabling the bill.

“I would just wish that the people who had the opinion that it doesn’t have an action had come up to me before hand, and we could have worked to include the actions they wanted,” Oruch said.

Oruch said that Alpha Epsilon Pi would be having a meeting soon to decide what the next step was in handling the incident.

CALENDAR COMMITTEE

In her officer report, Student Body President Hannah Love said that the calendar committee, a group under University Governance, passed legislation that would remove stop day from the 2012-2013 calendar.

Love, who ran last spring with calendar improvement as a platform issue, said that she was against this and had made several counterproposals to University Governance. One of them, she said, would break up finals week to allow students more time to study between finals.

She said that University Governance and the Provost’s office said they were willing to work with Student Senate on the issue.

The University sets its calendar five years in advance.

ELECTIONS COMMISSION

Adam McGonigle, chair of the Student Executive Committee, presented six students for nomination to the election commission for the Spring 2008 election season.

The six students are:

Chair – Adrienne Colcher, senior in political science

Outreach Chair – Emily Williams, senior in education

Rohit Venkatasubban, junior in business

Alex Herman, first year law student

Ethan Zipf-Sigler, second year law student

Rachel Burchfield, junior in journalism

The election commission oversees Student Senate elections, including interrupting rules, approving election materials, such as flyers, and holding hearings for accused election violations.

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