ll- Ea;l sga@iitedu TeChNeWS | TuesdayAugust30th,2016

Senate back in session for Fall 2016 semester

Soren Spicknall
CO PY EDITOR

Illinois Tech’s Student Government
Association (SGA), the organization which
is charged with representing the general
opinion of the student body to top university
administration and engaging in projects to
improve the student experience, witnessed a
shorteterm record turnout during its Executive
Board elections this Spring: Those elections,
which resulted in the appointment of Hamze
Leo Sukkar to the position of student body
President, set an optimistic tone for the level
of continuing engagement between SGA and
the students it represents, and discussions
were held by the organization’s new Executive
Board over summer to establish how best
to proceed with changes that could increase
SGA’s effectiveness in its activities

Those discussions within the Board
resulted in a formal proposal of amendments
to SGA’s constitution, slated for introduction
at the ﬁrst Senate meeting of the semester,
and the important business for that meeting
did not end there: Sung Min Choi Hong, the
new Chair of Finance Board, was present at the
Wednesday night meeting to put forward his
new Finance Board Advisor nominees, and San
Dinh, Sukkar’s nominee for Judicial Board’s
Chief Justice, was scheduled to speak and be
voted into that position, replacing Gina Qualter
(who was concurrently one of the nominees
for a Finance Board Advisor position): While
some of the decisions from that meeting
could largely be considered formalities (San
Dinh’s nomination was originally intended to
be conﬁrmed last semester, and each Finance
Board nominee had already been vetted by
a selection committee composed of a subset
of the SGA Senate), all the topics considered
were of great importance to the inner
structure of SGA, which in turn reﬂects on the
organization’s ability to efﬁciently carry out its
work:

The crucial nature of the debates and
votes scheduled for Wednesday’s meeting did
not prevent SGA from suffering in the face
of an annual challenge: keeping engagement
high among a body of Senators whose terms
were coming to an end in less than one
month: At the 9:15 start of the meeting, only
ten of the group’s twentyefour Senators (who
represent their academic colleges or specially,
designated groups like the Graduate Student
Association, Greek Council, and Residence
Hall Association) were present: To make
matters worse, after a full summer away from
SGA business, there was nobody present
who could present a deﬁnitive answer about
which of those twentyefour Senate seats were

considered active, and whether the number
of Senators present constituted the quorum
necessary to carry out votes: In fact, largely
unstructured debate over quorum took up
more time than any other topic during the
meeting, weaving its way in and out of the
agenda between planned items: Eventually,
after ineperson and online consultation with
former Executive Vice President Mete Morris,
former VP of Communications Subarno Saha,
and outgoing Chief Justice Gina Qualter, it
was determined that quorum consisted of half
the Senate, but that since one Senator was on
an exchange program, two had resigned, and
one had graduated, the ten individuals present
at the meetings start were just enough to
constitute a constitutionally permissible voting
group:

Asked to remark on his motivations
for seeking appointment to the position of
Chief Justice, nominee San Dinh admitted
that he was not much for public speaking,
and chose to talk mostly about his history of
membership in SGA (including his time as a
Judicial Board justice) and his commitment to
the organization’s future: The speech was very
brief, and afterbeing asked to leave the room for
discussion and a vote of the Senators present,
he was quickly brought back in after the Senate
agreed to ask further, more speciﬁc questions
of him: Questioned about where he thought
Judicial Board held weaknesses and how those
weaknesses could be addressed, San Dinh
pointed to the often hectic way that hearings
had been arranged in previous semesters,
frequently causing low total turnout among
Justices at any particular hearing, or even
frequent rescheduling before a single hearing
could be held: When asked about whether
he felt prepared to tackle SGA constitutional
issues should they arise (a relevant topic of
inquiry, since Judicial Board’s business deals
largely with student organization appeals of
Finance Board decisions), the candidate said
he had only a passing familiarity with the
organization’s constitution at the moment, but
would be committed to delving deeply into any
policies that were brought into question:

A vote was held on the topic of
San Dinh’s conﬁrmation, but results were
postponed for the majority ofthe meeting while
quorum information was being determined
At the meetings end, it was revealed that his
appointment had been approved, ofﬁcially
relieving Gina Qualter of her duties to Judicial
Board:

Next, the Senate heard brieﬂy from
Sung Min Choi Hong, presenting all but one of
his Finance Board nominees Each candidate
was given the chance to speak individually,
revealing diverse backgrounds and levels of
experience with SGA systems and ﬁnance in

general: One, notably, was a graduate student
in Finance at Stuart School of Business, hoping
to join Finance Board in part as an extension
of their education: The one major parallel
between those who were present, though, was
their willingness to admit that they had been
largely unfamiliar with Finance Board rules
and processes prior to their nominations, a
point that prompted remarks from Sung Min
Choi Hong about the intensive training the
group had undergone in the preceding weeks
to acquaint them with the workings of Finance
Board:

While the present Senators largely
seemed conﬁdent in the present crop after
a brief Q&A session, they were stymied by a
portion of SGA’s constitution which requires
Finance Board advisors to be voted in as a
slate, meaning that they would need to vote
the absent nominee through as well if they
wished to carry out the vote that day Because
a motion had been made and seconded to
bring the question to a vote prior to anyone
remembering the slate rule, Executive Vice
President Sonia Kamdar eventually chose to
restore order by reminding the Senate that the
same vote could be brought forward at a future
meeting: While this would be disadvantageous
for Finance Board (which currently lacks the
minimum required membership to vote on its
own internal matters), it would allow the Senate
to consider and discuss the ﬁnal candidate at
its meeting on the 7th of September: Finally,
the slate was handed a “no" vote for the time
being, though it was broadly understood
that the Finance Board Advisor nominees in
attendance were considered qualiﬁed for the
position

The ﬁnal substantial discussion ofthe
night came when covering the SGA Executive
Board’s proposed constitutional amendments,
which had been emailed to Senators two days
prior for consideration The proposed changes
included the elimination of the position of
Parliamentarian, which had not been ﬁlled
the previous year, and its replacement with
a general Secretary by the President: The
Vice President would also assume some of
the Parliamentarian’s prior duties under the
new constitutional language: Additionally,
the VP of Academic Affairs had duties added
to their position regarding attendance at
meetings of the University Faculty Council
(initially misnamed “Undergraduate
Faculty Committee" in the version of the
amendment that was emailed to Senators) and
Undergraduate Studies Committee, attendance
that had been established in the past but never
codiﬁed:

Aside from simply bringing the
organization’s laws in line with its traditional
activities, though, some of the proposed

changes dealt with more signiﬁcant matters:
Two new sections, 331 and 8:4, laid out plans
for an “Events and Publicity Committee",
headed by an Executiveelevel position
appointed by the SGA President, meant to be
focused entirely on planning and executing
SGAehosted events such as Town Halls and the
President and Provost Forum: In presenting
the concept, Sukkar argued that expecting
each existing SGA committee to individually
curate events related to their scope had led
to confusion over planning in the past, and
that the strategy of appointing a single Events
Chair to manage such actions last year was not
enough to do the job properly After questions,
clariﬁcations, and open discussions among
Senators, it was agreed upon that the words
“and Publicity’ ' would be struck from the
proposed committee’s name in order to avoid a
conﬂict of expectations with the organization’s
Communications Committee, which carries
out SGA’s promotional campaigns and external
relations work: More importantly, the Senators
reached a consensus requiring the position of
Events Chair to undergo a conﬁrmation vote
after nomination from the President, rather
than the direct appointment presented in the
amendment’s original language:

Though the preemeeting email
sent to Senators on Monday implied that a
vote would take place on the constitutional
amendments presented that Wednesday, such
an action would have violated Article 11 of the
constitution, which requires amendments to
be reviewed at one regular Senate meeting and
voted on at the next: Given the time elapsed
during the night’s discussions, though, it’s
unlikely that the tweaks agreed upon by the
Senate would have been made in time for a
vote that night anyways, so those changes will
be considered once again on the 7th: With the
clock ticking toward 11:30, Senate adjourned
without discussing a ﬁnal agenda item: a
proposal to introduce a twoetier student
organization system that had been formulated
and discussed last semester and over the
Summer in the group’s Slack team:

SGA Senate meetings happen every
other Wednesdayat 9: 1 5 pm: in Stuart Building
112, and are open to all students of the Illinois
Institute of Technology, VanderCook College
of Music, and Shimer College: Its committee
meeting happen on alternate Wednesdays at
the same time, in MTCC’s colored conference
rooms: SGA’s members are reachable on Slack
at iitsgaslackcom:

Why you should not run for student government senator in the upcoming SGA election

San Dinh
TEC H N EWS W RITE R

Nominations for Student
Government Senate are open, and your
Facebook notiﬁcations are ﬂooded with
invitations from either the Student
Government Association (SGA), who tell
you to nominate yourself because they don’t
know who you really are but at the same time
have faith in your power to make a difference
within one year, or from that one friend who is
running and is asking for your endorsement:

As a member of the senate election
committee this fall, I wanted to write an
inspiring and motivational article that as soon
as you ﬁnish reading, you would believe that

you want to do this “SGA thing" even though
you are taking 18 credit hours, have a part
time job, and regularly procrastinate on your
homework However, I soon realized that I am
not that talented, so instead, I made it easier
for myself by telling you why you should NOT
run for SGA’s upcoming election:

First of all, the pain might not out
weigh the prizes: Senators are not the “cool"
guys like the Greek people, nor are they the
outgoing ones like people on Union Board:
They are the ones that the student body blames
for not working hard enough to improve their
lives at Illinois Tech, and they are also the
ones that some staff members feel annoyed
by because they try too hard to deliver the
requests from the students: At the end of your

senatorial term, you walk away with only a
line in your resume saying you were trusted
by the students, and if you actually invest at
least 5 hours per week doing SGA work, you
might have a 2 minute pitch to convince the
recruiters in your job interview that you have
leadership, communication, and interpersonal
skills:

Secondly, you are only here at Illinois
Tech shortly, so why try making it a better
place? Similarly, you don’t necessarily have to
make the world a better place, since you only
temporarily live here: Additionally, you don’t
need to be very successful or happy because
you can only live for a few more decades: After
all, the good news is “everything is temporary",
but the bad news is “everything is temporary”:

Last, but not least, if elected, you
will most likely give up your senatorial duties
half way through: There is no consequence at
all for not fulﬁlling your SGA work, or not
showing up at the mandatory meeting: Worst,
case scenario, you are bored and resign, or you
are removed from your seat, but since you only
work halfeheartedly, that doesn’t bother you at
all: In the past 2 years, the ﬁrst Senate meetings
of the Fall semester barely had quorum: I
assume you are just like most of the past
senators, irresponsible and perfunctory, but I
really want to see you prove me wrong:

If I failed to convince you to not run
for Senate, submit your nominations to sga@
iit:edu or http:/ /tinyurl:c0m/iitfa1120 1 6electi0n

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