The Associated Student Body Student Senate approved a bill to fund their End-of-the-Year banquet to the tune of $1,745.04, but a majority of the meeting was spent discussing whether they would ask the administration for an extension of the sign up deadline for Sen. Shayana Mendes for the trip to the General Assembly in Los Angeles on May 1-4.
Director of Finance Jorge Riley introduced the idea of doing this. Mendes, who is disabled, missed the Thursday deadline to submit her packet, citing personal problems including the death of a friend.
The motion proposed by Riley was that she turn in her packet by the first meeting of the General Assembly committee, which has not yet been formed.
“I don’t see why we couldn’t request an extension for a disabled student,” Director of Public Relations Daniela Vargas said.
Student Senate adviser Tanika Byrd interjected her opinions on multiple occasions.
“It’s not very easy to get a group of people to fly all the way to Southern California. We have hotel reservations, flight reservations, food, and everything else. We set really hard deadlines for the reason of being able to process paperwork in a timely manner,” adviser Byrd said.
She added, “We’re preparing you as professionals and leaders that there are deadlines to the work that you do. That’s time management on your end and that’s part of what we’ve done.”
The board voted three in favor of the motion and three opposed with three abstentions.
President Kenneth Hinton cast the tie breaking vote in favor of asking the administration to extend the deadline for Mendes. However, he cast his vote under the condition that she turn in her packet by Friday.
Clubs and Events Board President Jeremy Diefenbacher expressed his frustration with the amount of time spent discussing Senator Mendes’ request.
“It’s not the jurisdiction of the board and the minute that happened, we should have moved on,” Diefenbacher said. “The constant objections is (are) not cooperative and an important part of any social system is being a cooperative team player and I feel exhausted, I’m going to take a nap now. We had a 45 minute meeting and a 35 minute conversation.”
Mendes feels Diefenbacher was not “respectful” of her.
Discussion of the multiple resolutions introduced at last weeks meeting was tabled until next week.
The bill for the End-of-the-Year banquet establishes a banquet planning committee which will report to the Student Senate at their March 27 meeting.
Three attempts have been made by the Current to speak with Student Senate President Kenneth Hinton – the first following the March 13 meeting, the second over email, and the third following the Mar. 18 meeting.
Hinton told the Current he had another meeting after the March 13 and March 18 meetings, and he did not reply to the email.
Director of Finance Jorge Riley, former acting Student Senate president, expressed criticism of Hinton’s attitude towards the Current.
“He’s representing you and refusing to speak to you. As much as I was hammered by the Current when I was student body president, it was not something I was allowed to deny,” Riley said.
“I think its very immature what he’s doing,” he added.