After nearly an hour and a half of heated debate and discussion during ASMSU’s Thursday policy committee meeting, the representatives voted unanimously (7 yes votes, one abstention) to pass a bill that would regulate how vacant positions are filled on the general assembly.
The bill is designed to “amend the ASMSU Code of Operations to create an official process of appointing members of ASMSU to represent colleges with vacant seats in the general assembly for the duration of the assembly’s session,” according to the text of the bill.
“There’s no real process by which appointments to the GA be recommended,” said representative for the College of Social Science and bill introducer Evan Schrage.
There are many vacant seats for representatives on general assembly, but the way they are filled now is very unofficial. The potential representative contacts Vice President of Internal Administration Kathryn Maass, who then drafts a bill to approve the appointment.
The bill would create an appointment board, which will consist of the vice president of internal administration, the vice president of special projects, the ASMSU liaison for university multicultural affairs and “at least one currently serving representative of the college the petitioner is applying for.” The board will have to unanimously approve candidates and the general assembly still has final approval.
Candidates now need 25 signatures from ASMSU taxpayers to be considered, the same number that students who run in general elections need. Part of the inspiration for the bill was to discourage laziness in representative candidates, who may use the vacancy to slip into ASMSU as a resume builder.
“They shouldn’t get to skate by because they didn’t run in the general election like the rest of us did,” Schrage said.
At the start of the policy committee meeting, support for the bill was by no means unanimous. Though the bill seconder, Vice President for Special Projects Ryan Smith said that the four-page bill “was a very big collaborative effort,” some representatives on the committee felt that important people were left out of the bill’s planning, including Maass, who will have the most new responsibilities because of the bill, as she was only contacted by the bill’s writers earlier in the week.
“Our biggest problem is engagement, so how is this going to get people engaged?” Maass said.
As the discussion on the bill ran on, Representative for the Multicultural Greek Council Andrew Nazzaro suggested discussion be moved to a later date, which led to more heated discussion of options that included tabling the bill.
Vice President for Governmental Affairs KC Perlberg said that he didn’t like deep legislation being approved after only one meeting, while Schrage and Smith said that it was meaningful legislation and a vote shouldn’t be delayed.
Schrage said that ASMSU would be “doing ourselves an injustice by tabling big pieces of legislation every time.”
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