The Student Government Association discussed several pieces of legislation during last week’s meeting.
Sen. David Lane proposed what he called the Students’ Rights Act. This legislation stated that the SGA would not deny student admittance to Senate meetings. However, the SGA has reserved the right to close meetings or ask someone to leave if deemed appropriate.
“We are responsible to the student body,” Lane said. “I believe the students have the right to know what’s going on.”
As it is, the SGA is not obligated to open Senate meetings and can close them with a two-thirds majority vote.
Some senators felt that Lane’s proposal was unnecessary for several reasons. “Even though we rarely close meetings, I don’t want to see this limit our power to close a meeting in the future,” said Sen. Ron Keller.
Others saw this as a non-issue because few students outside the SGA attend and meetings are seldom closed.
Sen. Chris Ziegler also pointed out that the minutes of Senate meetings are considered public and are open for viewing in the SGA office located on the first level of the Culp Center.
Based on these factors, the legislation failed to pass.
Sen. Lane also proposed legislation that would require committees to maintain a journal of all meetings.
“This will benefit future committees in seeing what was done in the past,” Lane said. “It will also be a record of how individuals voted. No one has had to explain their vote before.”
The committee journals, which are essentially the meeting’s minutes, will therefore, promote committee accountability and will educate future members about committee precedents.
Lane’s proposal was accepted and passed by the Senate.
In other matters, five new members were accepted and sworn in. The new senators are Amanda Howard, Ryan Kelly, Clark Marlock, Jason Robinson and Johnathan Rourke.

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