Raucous senate meeting yields minimal results

By Stephen George

Raucous senate meeting yields minimal results

By Stephen George

News Editor

In an uncharacteristically long and raucous meeting of the Student Senate last Tuesday, tensions ran high and little progress was made concerning the senate’s new business, namely the Multicultural Programming Fund and ACCESS.

The Multicultural Programming Fund, a new proposal by SGA President Chris Marlin, would disperse funds from both SGA and the university president to ethnically diverse student groups and Recognized Student Organizations (RSOs). The fund is based on the African American Programming Fund, which was initiated in 1999 and intended to provide $20,000 directly to recognized African American organizations for events, such as speeches, that would further promote diversity on campus.

The African American Programming Fund has been inaccessible for the past two months due to attempts at restructuring accountability for the money: $10,000 from SGA and $10,000 from the university president.

Under the new proposal, decisions regarding SGA’s portion of the funding would be in the hands of the senate finance committee, an issue that has the African American community outraged. A motion was passed to create a committee, composed two-thirds by African American representatives and one-third by senate finance committee members, to meet with President Ramsey and discuss the new proposal.

“It’s irrational for African Americans to have to come and get approval from a body that cannot sympathize with them culturally,” arts and sciences senator Curtis Nelson said at the meeting, which eventually escalated to a screaming match between representatives of the African American community and SGA.

Several senators expressed doubts in addressing the issue at the meeting, a sentiment that was originally conveyed by Marlin on the advice of acting President James Ramsey. The main course of reason was that the senate lacked the necessary information to properly discuss the issue at the time.

“Here we are figuring out whether or not you or the president have enough information to discuss this fund,” former SGA Executive Vice President Stacy Brooks said. “You only care about controlling the money. You only care about controlling the interested party’s ability to use the money.”

As tensions in the packed Floyd Theatre escalated, personal assaults on Marlin and several senators ensued. “It (the fund) was established before you,” Nelson said to Marlin. “You’re on a power trip. I think you’re being very cancerous to this community. You’re not listening to students.”

Marlin attempted to explain his proposal and his reasoning for amending the already established African American Programming Fund. “I believe the senate should have control of funds dispersed to the student body,” he said.

Nelson countered with a personal attack on Marlin. “The student government president is fabricating reports to you,” Nelson said to the senate. “Chris Marlin is a racist. This is supremacy.”

The discussion got so out of hand that the Department of Public Safety was called. Upon the officers’ arrival, Marlin stepped outside and dissuaded the officers from getting involved.

Upon Marlin’s return to the meeting, Acting Assistant Vice President for Student Life and SGA Advisor Al Herring quelled the rage with a soft-spoken and poignant assessment of the situation. “You’ve got a proposal here that clearly has not involved enough student input and enough student dialogue from at least one significant aspect of your campus community,” he said. “Any time you deny students an opportunity to thoroughly and successfully discuss an issue, you are going to get this reaction. Secondly, you’ve got issues of race here, issues that we have not demonstrated as a campus that we are in a condition to discuss successfully. And so bringing up this issue, with all of that hanging with it, is ill-advised. If it gets to the point where we’ve got to call the police and be heavy-handed with each other, I don’t think that’s productive, and I don’t think anybody wants that here.”

As Herring continued, a visible calm fell over audience and senators alike. “Thirdly,” he said, “it is really clear that what you hear students saying is that they want to exercise their right as students, and that is to speak to an issue that is very important to them, that they are passionate about, that they’re actually trying to give guidance to the campus about.”

Herring then offered a solution. “You need to put these monies in the control of the folks who the money was earmarked for,” he said. “That is not a defeat on the part of SGA, it’s not a concession; it is simply following the spirit with which those monies were set aside.”

Though Herring’s words were a temporary remedy to the harsh accusations that flew back and forth throughout, the fact remains that the meeting was entirely out of order and lacked the parliamentary structure generally assumed regarding a senate session.

“I’m very sorry that that happened,” Arts and Sciences Senator Brian Chan said of the chaotic nature of the meeting. “It was a senate meeting primarily, not an open forum. The structure isn’t meant for open discussion. I don’t think people were listening to each other. I don’t think people were respecting each other.”

While the controversy over the Multicultural Programming Fund took center stage, the senate also managed to agree upon a proposal concerning ACCESS (Adult Commuter Center-Evening Student Services). The original proposal, authored by Marlin and Academic Vice President John Daniel, essentially states that inquiries must be held concerning the future potential for the SGA-funded center, because there is an overriding concern that “the Student Government Association’s ability to maintain the highest quality services… is not sufficient.” A motion was passed unanimously by the senate to begin investigating the current status of ACCESS and the potential for SGA to continue to fund it.