News Reporter, Special Sections Editor
As the semester progresses, campus has been getting busier and so has ASG. Wednesday night’s meeting saw the passing of four bills as well as an interesting senate debate about how senators are voted into office.
The first bill that passed allocated $750 from the ASG operating budget for the homecoming carnival on October 25 — $450 is to rent lights and a dunk tank and the remaining $300 is for food.
“The Homecoming carnival and bonfire is a collaboration between clubs, ASG and PAC,” ASG President Arield Diamond said. “We are excited to have the carnival before the bonfire and are working to reach all clubs for participation.
Forms will be available on OrgSync soon for clubs and organizations to sign up for a booth at the carnival.
The next three bills concerned changes to the ASG constitution. The only change was reducing the Presidential Chief of Staff, Director of Finance and Student Trustee’s minimum office hours. They lowered from 10 hours per week to five.
This was done to reflect changes that were made in the ASG operating budget last year. These changes cut the salary of all three positions in half, as well as eliminated the Secretary position, whose responsibilities were shifted to the Director of Communications position. A bill reflecting the change of the Secretary position passed in April, and former ASG President Telbe Storbeck told the Criterion at that time that these cuts were made to make ASG more fiscally responsible.
During discussion, Senator Colton Vaughan brought up the idea of changing the way senate elections work. Vaughan is proposing that only students of a particular major(s) can vote for those senators that are running to represent their particular department (i.e. only math, statistics and computer science majors would be able to vote for the Computer Science, Mathematics and Statistics Senator). At-Large positions as well as the President and Vice President elections would run the same as in the past.
“The reason I think this would be a good idea,” Vaughan said. “Is because, in my mind, it would lend more accountability to the office and you would have more contact, I think, and more responsibility with the people you’re supposed to be representing.”
Senate Leader Connor Boe was in partial agreement with Vaughan, but voiced concerns about voter turnout and small department sizes.
“We just don’t have quite a large enough population yet,” Boe said. “We have looked at CU, CSU, Texas A&M and some other larger universities that do this, and it actually works out quite well because they have the population.”
Due to CMU’s small department sizes and low voter turnout, some of the senators representing smaller departments may only end up with four or five votes, which Boe said is not representative enough.
A majority of the Senate agreed with Vaughan that changing the process could help fight corruption within student government, but thought that the university may not be ready for it.
“The current system fits with the small campus ideal,” Boe said.
Discussion is planned to continue during at a later date.
tfife@mavs.coloradomesa.edu
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