Senate swears in first-year members, discusses budget
By Sarah Hinck, Contributing Writer
This week at the third Student Senate meeting of the semester, six recently elected senators as well as class officers of the Class of 2021 were sworn into office after pledging to uphold the principles of honesty, integrity, and accountability as leaders at Gettysburg College.
The results of the election were announced Sunday:
The elected officers of the Class of 2021 are Ali Nettles (President) and Hassan Williams-Kone (treasurer). No one ran for vice president or secretary, so the elected officers will appoint those positions in the coming days.
The six senators, one representing each residence hall, are Nicholas Nelson (Patrick), Mark Marotta (Huber), Marisa Balanda (Hanson), Nate Bennett (Rice), Christi Wright (Paul), and Christian Whitsel (Stine).
Each of these individuals is required to serve on one of the many committees.
At next week’s meeting, multiple clubs will be seeking approval of their budget requests under the Senate’s new “common consent” procedure, which entails approval of the budget as a single vote after senators have the prior week to review the requests rather than the prior practice of clubs presenting their budget requests to the full body at each meeting.
Senate currently has $91,505 in its New Initiatives Fund. Last year, it dipped $23,000 into its Rollover Fund, which contains unspent funds from previous years.
President Luke Frigon says that Senate hopes to spend that Rollover Fund this year, perhaps on new water bottle filling stations around campus or a new scholarship, two ideas that have been discussed thus far. He encourages students to submit their own ideas as well for how to spend the fund.
