Senate Discusses Statement on DACA, New Budget Procedures in Second Meeting
Photo credit: Gettysburg College
By Miranda Feeley, Staff Writer
The second Student Senate meeting of the semester began without a quorum, preventing any official votes from being held. The Executive Board reminded representatives and senators that three unexcused absences could result in consequences such as removal of the official or probation of the club. They then proceeded to business that did not require voting.
Treasurer Sarah Berkowitz introduced a new method of budgetary submissions intended to shorten deliberation time during Senate meetings. Clubs will come before the Budgetary Committee and receive conditional approval, at which point the request will be emailed to members of the Senate for review. Issues will be brought up at the Senate meeting the following week, and if there are no issues, the Senate will pass all budgets at once. Berkowitz stated that “It does put a little more responsibility on clubs to get their budget requests in on time, and more responsibility on senators and club representatives to not blindly follow [the Budget Management Committee].”
Last week, on The Gettysburgian‘s podcast “On Target,” Senate President Luke Frigon, a former chair of the Budget Management Committee, suggested that Senate may not have approved funds for Robert Spencer, whose speech on Islamic fundamentalism sparked controversy on campus, had they known more about him at the time of the vote. He pointed to this process as a way for Senate to have more time to vet speakers.
The Senate was also presented with a draft of an opinion by the Executive Board in reply to President Riggs’s own response to the Trump Administration rescinding DACA. Many students seemed to be concerned with what actions could be taken by the Senate.
Senator Michael Mancuso ’19 argued against the promise to take action. “I think the promise of action is a promise we can’t fulfill,” he contended.
Senator Callie Fucarino ’20, on the other hand, stated that “I don’t think it’s a promise of action…we’re not going to charge the White House, but we can support our community.”
The Board did note that not every member of the Senate had to agree with the statement, because it represented only the Executive Board, and that anyone who disagrees is welcome to publish an editorial to that effect in The Gettysburgian.
Finally, Paul Redfern ’00, Executive Director of Communications and Marketing, gave a presentation on the overhaul of Gettysburg.edu to be completed in the next 18 months. This will be the first upgrade since 2006, and one of the major motivations behind the change is that the current website does not meet all the standards it should according to the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Aside from this, Redfern stated that, while the website does function currently, “we want something that will serve us well into the future.”
