New SG senate elects leaders
April 5, 2006 12:00 am by Suzanne Parks
Newly-elected Student Government senators spent Tuesday evening voting on chairpersons for each committee, including the positions of senate president and president pro-tempore.
After much debate, the position of senate president went to Barclay Harless, a senator from the previous term. Harless said he hopes to add more spark to the senate during his term in office by working closely with the senators on issues he knows will affect students directly.
"(My) key objective by far is to invigorate the senate," Harless said. "I think right now we're doing our job, but we're not doing our best. I want to invigorate the senate to look more toward students' interests."
Out of the seven positions voted on during the meeting, three of them only had one candidate; one of these was the position of pro-tempore, which was attained by current pro-tempore Devin Lee. The position of pro-tempore acts as a vice president of the senate.
"Basically the pro-tempore acts in places that the president can not," Lee said. "I'm going to be kind of the 'what if?' guy. I'll be looking for issues and saying 'OK, what if this happen or what if that happened?'"
Senator Maureen Murphy was elected to be the Organizational Outreach Committee chair and said she knows it's going to be difficult considering the OOC is a newly formed committee that replaced the Student Concerns Committee.
"My goal is to show the potential the OOC has," Murphy said. "This is a transition phase from SCC to the OCC, and now that we've gotten over that hump, we're ready to move forward in the right direction. I'm really excited."
Senator Chirag Vijapura, who was elected to chair the Rules Committee, said he hopes to get some of the senators more involved in the governmental process.
"My goal is to get at least everybody in the Rules Committee to write a bill," Vijapura said. "I want to get other senators involved as well, though, so they can gain experience and make their voices heard."
Senator Umer Ahmed was named Budget Committee chair, senator Blake Bell was named as Special Projects Committee chair and senator Mark Vila was named to University Relations chair.