In October, the next big issue for the senate arose: attendance. The Senate Rules and Administration Committee, or R&A, is the standing committee responsible for tracking senator attendance.
This includes regular senate meetings, committee meetings, and the senators’ required office hours – two per week in the SGA offices in the Student Union Building – which are to ensure that they are performing up to expectations of the “Rules of the Senate” and the SGA constitution.
Erika Allen, the R&A chairwoman and a third-year senator from the Honors College, delivered warnings throughout October to the senate during their meetings and urged them to make sure that they follow the required attendance policy.
Colin Davis, a third-year senator in the College of Arts and Sciences, sits on the R&A committee and said that attendance issues have been pushed aside in the past.
“We’ve actually been too lax in the rules,” he said, “and I will say I was too last year as chairman – we let way too many things slide.”
When the R&A committee filed 32 motions to impeach based on attendance, 58 percent of the senate was brought under scrutiny; however, R&A conceded that there was a problem with the senators’ clocking system that helped track office hours. R&A let 28 of the motions die in their committee, but the warning still stood: the committee is watching.
One senator chose to resign over absences that week, and three were impeached and removed on the senate floor on Oct. 25. Ivan Frederick of the Graduate School, Amy Akabue of the University College, and Gatewood Brown, a senator-at-large, were each unanimously impeached for neglect-of-duty then unanimously removed.
This “historic occasion,” Davis said, was one that hadn’t been seen in over 10 years in the senate.
“We see now,” he explained, shaking his head, “that the problem is the caliber of people we are electing to the senate. Not all of them are up to the right level we need, and I think this is setting a great precedent for the future.”
About Anthony Hall
