Session of January 16th, 2020
Minutes Recorded by: McKenzie Craycraft, Secretary
Visitors: Piper Ward, Jonathan Lockridge, Dean Conn
Call to Order at 11:01 AM
Senator LaQuey prays
Roll Called
Approval of Minutes
Minutes approved at 11:04 AM
Officer Reports
Senator LaQuey: Jeans are not in dress code.
Committee Reports
Senator Beckham: I am submitting a letter of resignation to resign from chair of constitution.
Senator Worrell: The plaque is in from the last semester. I will meet with facilities and get a time to put it up. I will send a picture once it is up.
Senator Welch: Election time is coming up. Meeting for impact January 22. After that they open up Impact positions. This includes student government. That is when signing up for any of the chairs of VP, LSM and YAC open up. I am shooting for 3-4 on a Friday. Please come if you can. I like to have a bunch of monkeys with me.
Dean Conn: Can I speak during this? Speaking on behalf of Welch, I want everyone to know the Impact info event is on Wednesday. We will announce how to do elections. We need to make sure we are confirmed on dates for everything. It will be a little different than last year. In the past a student has just gone up and said senate is great. All the groups sound the same after a while. This year, I will go up with students and speak with them. If Andrew could talk about senate and Welch talk about elections that would be good. We would like everyone to be there. There are a lot of us, and we have matching shirts. I will send out an email, but you should see advertisements for it. The expectation is that everyone attends. I won’t take attendance, but I would like for you to be there. If we have a display, I suggest that PR&R have something on the table.
Senator Gowing: As a member of the constitution committee and also the social media coordinator, would it be best for us to have little displays for each of the committees? So that people can see what senate does.
Dean Conn: That is a good idea. This shows each of the groups and what they do.
Senator LaQuey: Point of order, let’s stay on track with the topic of business. Committee report for student life committee, we are still picking a meeting time either Wednesday or Friday evening. We are looking for projects. Please bring these ideas up so we can begin working on them. Senate ice cream will be this Friday. Please come at 3:30 to help set up.
Senator Brenner: FAC budgets are due to either the senate email or Ascoff on February 7th at midnight. I sent out an email to all the clubs with the expectations for their budgets. Ascoff will be taking over for this committee.
Senator Gowing: For constitution, presently we are working to find meeting times for those interested in joining the constitution committee. I don’t know how regular our meeting times will be. We will focus on meeting when it is necessary.
Special Business
Senator Brenner: I will be resigning from senate. Thanks for a great time, it was fantastic working with all.
Senator Beckham: Most of you know me and if you don’t, you should because I remember you joining senate. I am the most senior member. Through my time here I have seen senate grow from a body that didn’t respect itself to a body that does respect others and is bring in more respect. I have the utmost respect for senate, but I cannot take this seriously. Due to my respect for senate I can’t respect it, so I am leaving. Jason says hi. Shrimp heaven now. Bring back the fire tornado.
PPT Murphy: In light of the resonation, I am appointing Gowing as chair of constitution, Ascoff to the FAC chair, Senator Gowing is being removed from PR&R so that he can focus on being chair. Senator Livingston is moving to constitution from student life.
Swearing in Piper Ward
Old Business
PPT Murphy: Motion to bring an amendment of the Reconstruction Act of Fall of 2019 to the floor.
Approved
Senator Gowing: Motion to bring to a vote
Approved
Amendment is ratified
New Business
Senator LaQuey: Motion to bring bill Friday Ice Cream Funding Bill of Spring 2020 to the floor.
Approved
Bill approved
PPT Murphy: Motion to bring bill The Coffee with the Executive Cab of Spring 2020 to the floor.
Approved
Bill approved
Announcements
VP Reid: With regards to the flags on the TVs, Don Egel and Alan Clipperton have also been working on this project, they are coming on the 23rd and we will discuss how to get this done. I received a phone call on the way in here. President Lunsford is saying that students are emailing directly. He has expressed displeasure about this to Collin Patterson. If you want to have a meeting with him speak with Collin or his secretary or bring your issues here.
PPT Murphy: I am running in this election season for VP. Please help Welch because I cannot help.
Open Forum
Senator Worrell: I have had a few people tell me about different payment rates. They are asking why YAC employs are paid less than the intermural employs. I wanted to bring this up to see if you have heard anything.
VP Reid: The payment for these come from two different budgets. YAC comes from our budget but LeTourneau pays intermurals.
Senator Worrell: I told them I believed the funding same from different location.
Dean Conn: The payrate for YAC was set in 1999 and hasn’t been changed. The ceiling on what YAC makes is controlled by senate.
Senator Gowing: On this count, that would make a lot of sense, until recently senate has not paid a lot of attention to things like this. I am sure that a lot of the YAC people would appreciate this and it could help our relationship with them. We might want to wait to discuss this when the chair of FAC is here.
VP Reid: I want to point out that YAC bylaws state how much they get paid. Per their rules, they have $3,000 to pay the YAC people. The money is split evenly between everyone who is employed. Based off of the constitution F of the YAC bylaws, they can amend these bylaws by a 2/3 vote. YAC is in charge of their own pay.
Dean Conn: I stand corrected, I believe Senator Goodie may have changed that at some point.
Senator McClain: Is there a cap to make sure that other clubs also get funded evenly and we still have money for projects we want to do?
VP Reid: Senate funding for clubs never exceeds $10,000.
Citizen Brenner: It is actually not in writing how much we can fund clubs; in theory everything is negotiable.
PPT Murphy: In reference to McClain, there is no cap for clubs, in our laws, it gives a percentage of how much Senate, YAC, LSM all get. YAC can rewrite their bylaws. Senate would have to rewrite our laws if the amount of money they got increased.
Citizen Brenner: An easy work around that is to allocate more funding by the semester request if another organization requests funding.
Senator Wang: Do we have a way to communicate with YAC about this? At this point it seems like a ball in their court.
VP Reid: We can invite them to senate, but I also have a meeting with the exec cab tomorrow. The amount they get paid comes from our general fund, but does that take away from their portion of funding or do they still have it all?
PPT Murphy: As far as the laws, we give a percentage to YAC when they get their percentage of the money they can decide where it goes. If they change their salaries, they might be taking away from events but it’s up to them.
Senator LaQuey: Please inform LSM and the other branches about funding. Should the policies of building the golf course first be a policy among the other branches of student government. What I am referring to is during the Vietnam war, the Air Force built golf courses before they built barracks. They went to senate and asked for more funding. The Army went and built their barracks then asked for more money. Should we increase the funding of YAC employs and then have them ask for money for specific events?
VP Reid: I want to be careful not to bypass the constitution. There is an even split between the branches. To give them more money would take away from another group. The even splitting will be gone.
Senator Gowing: It would wind up with the issue of taking away from the other organizations. It sounds like a good idea but isn’t viable. LSM barely knows what it does anyway and taking funding away would hurt.
Senator McClain motions to adjourn.
Senator Mathews seconds.
Meeting Adjourned at 11:44 AM