Student Governtment Association senators convened for their weekly meeting on Oct. 24, and voted down a resolution that would encourage groups of students, particularly sororities and fraternities, from disrupting the quiet at the Omer Poos Law Library. They also passed a resolution asking SLU to implement Google Applications for graduate students sooner rather than later, and they passed a $500 additional spot-funding bill for the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization.
The first resolution, written and submitted by two Law School senators, encouraged undergraduate students to hold their meetings somewhere other than the Law School library, since the senators had received numerous complaints about the distracting noise from group studying. Commuter Senator Lucie Swain raised the concern that this resolution was the beginning of excluding undergraduate students from the Law School library.
Law School Senator Lisa Adams said that the library was public for SLU students, and undergraduates will not be banned, hours may be restricted. Adams said that undergraduates are always welcome, “as long as you’re not talking [in the library].”
Commuter Senator Aaron LaPlante questioned the potentially negative impact the resolution could have on students’ study habits.
“It’s not good to discourage students [from studying] at any point,” he said.
An attempt to reword the resolution to clarify who and what exactly was being restricted from the library failed due to senate regulations that limit what can be amended. The Senate voted on the resolution and subsequently rejected it.
Next on the agenda was a second resolution, also written and submitted by Law School senators, which would push SLU to get the Google Applications up and running for more students by Nov. 30. As it stands, the Google Applications that went into effect for undergraduates on Oct. 24 would not begin working for graduate students until next year. LaPlante felt it was unfair to put this kind of pressure on ITS.
“I think ITS has been working as hard as they can,” he said.
As a result, LaPlante proposed an amendment that changed the resolution to encourage SLU to implement Google Applications “at its earliest convenience,” as opposed to specifically Nov. 30. The amended resolution was unanimously approved.
Finally in the meeting, Financial Vice President John Curry brought up a spot-funding bill that would allocate an additional $500 to the CEO, due to a budget misunderstanding from the previous week. The $500 had been counted twice as revenue, leading to an unbalanced budget for the CEO. The Senate unanimously passed the bill to fix the budget error.
