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ASUA postponed re-structuring survey

The ASUA Senate last night postponed the approval of a final draft of a Senate re-structure survey and voted down a request from the Escort Service for additional funding.

Sens. Ray Quintero and Julie Burkhart have been working on a Senate re-structure survey since last semester.

The survey, which will be given to the councils of each college, includes six different proposals on how the Senate should be re-structured.

Some of the options include having the Senate re-structured to have a representative from each college, leaving the Senate as it is and appointing campus representatives to lobby the Senate, or dividing the campus into districts with regional representation.

The other options are mixing college representatives and elected senators, or having the Senate represented by constituencies, like Greek Life, honor students, Residence Life and others.

The Senate debated over whether the proposals should include demographic sections before it was released to the college councils.

Sen. Shane Brogan said the release of the proposals to the college councils should be postponed until demographic information was included.

"Even though this is going to clubs and organizations, I think it's important to know if this club is mostly seniors or agriculture students etcetera," Brogan said.

He added that he didn't see how the surveys could be useful when the Senate would not know who was giving them the information.

Quintero and Burkhart decided that a re-structuring of the Senate might increase representation after they surveyed about 200 students last semester.

Quintero said a significant number of the students surveyed thought a change of the current Senate structure was necessary.

The Senate decided to put off sending the survey to college councils until the demographic information was added.

Burkhart was the only one opposed to tabling the issue, saying it was because the survey was intended for clubs and organizations - not individuals.

The Senate also decided to deny a request for $2,064.54 to the Escort Service until the ASUA Administrative Vice President, Viviane Safrin, was available to go over the proposal.

The measure was approved by Sens. Brogan, Quintero, Lauren Beth Hickey, Dwight Maloney and Ryan Roa.

Sens. Burkhart, Michael Dobbs, Amanda Martin and Saad Nasim were against striking the request.

Sen. Tiffany Podbielski abstained from the vote because she works for the Escort Service.