New Senate Puts Pressure on the Exec
In a move to push reform to the forefront of the upcoming 2007-2008 Senate agenda, the freshly elected batch of Campaign for Change politicians (as well as returning senators Kyle McKenzie and Athan Papailiou) have submitted their expectations of the new executive in the following letter to Emily McLain and San SunOwen:
May 18, 2007
Dear Emily and San,
Congratulations on your election to the ASUO Executive. We look forward to working with you in establishing a strong and active student government for next year. We believe that certain changes are both necessary and justified to improve the way in which we serve our constituents.
For the following year, we hope to implement reforms to both student government rules and budgeting processes. Here are some of our goals that are of immediate necessity.
• Incidental Fee Reform; restructuring the outdated process in order to make it more equal and transparent.
• Ethics Reform; updating and adding guidelines for the conduct of our student leaders.
• Surplus Model; establishing a fair and flexible, yet accountable model to judge Senate surplus requests.
• Outreach; reducing program feelings of alienation and increasing their awareness and participation in the ASUO.
• Green Tape Notebook Revisions; updating hastily prepared rules that have accumulated over the years without any review.
In order to achieve our goals, we respectfully request that upcoming vacancies be filled in a timely fashion. We firmly believe that the Senate is strongest when full and therefore respectfully request that upcoming vacancies are filled before completion of this school year, given that the applicant pool is strong and large.
We look forward to working with you over the next year.
Again, congratulations.
Samantha Brodey
Kyle McKenzie
Neil Brown
Athan Papailiou
Dan Feldman
Karen Trippe
Kate Jones
Noor Rajabzadeh
Donnie Kim
Lee Warnecke
While the planned reforms are ambitious and will be time consuming, the new senate is already ahead of the game, asking Senator Jones, who will be serving on the Summer Senate, to draft new ethics guidelines which will be presented to the Senate in the fall.
While McLain and SunOwen have yet to appoint their picks to the Senate, it will be interesting to see if they can work alongside the dominant Change crew. Seats still up for grabs are PFC seats 1 and 2, EMU Board seat 5 which was vacated by Lleras joining the executive, Journalism seat 10, Architecture and Allied Arts seat 12, and Graduate/Law seat 18. All of these future appointments are required to face the Senate for approval, so be ready for the June 13th meeting where these approvals will likely take place. As always, we’ll bring you all of the ugly details and personal insults after the meeting with an update on the blog.
Man, I had no idea Chlorofluorocarbons took such an interest in the ASUO!
It seems like this simple enough request won’t be happening. Everyone should be asking why, but I’ll give you a hint… Chi, out of office, three days, personal vacation
Oh, yeah, and this is a good start too. I would add Overrealized reforms to make sure that excess funds collected by the ASUO because of Oregon Hall’s enrollment overestimates don’t become the Senate’s little piggybank for swell projects. On the whole though, Emily would be crazy to fight this.
Good luck y’all… reforming the ASUO is a tough, thankless and entirely worthwhile pursuit. If there are CFC people out there, I wish you all the best.
Got any good opium jokes?
just thought I’d stop by and say hello to all you commentator folk! I am so proud of the Campaign for Change crew taking steps to assert their place in the ASUO! Go get em!
They’re scheduled for a meeting on the 13th according to the ASUO website …
Well this senate does…disappointed your appointment to con court won’t be postponed until fall?
Are they going to have a June 13th meeting? Senate doesn’t usually meet during dead week and finals week.