Eleven students representing ETSU at the Tennessee Intercollegiate mock State Legislature (TISL) brought home much more from Nashville than they were expecting.
Not only did they get the award for being the best delegation, but two of the 10 bills that they presented were made priority legislation. This means that the governor of TISL will actually present them to the state Senate and the bills could possibly become law.
“I think that TISL was both beneficial and educational for the students who went as well as the SGA as a whole, which will ultimately serve the student body here at ETSU,” Tiffany Porter said.
TISL, which was founded 35 years ago by Dr. Douglas Carlisle, is the nation’s first mock legislature for college students.
It allows students to present and debate legislation in an atmosphere which accurately imitates Tennessee’s real general assembly. Many representatives in Tennessee have at one time participated in TISL.
Elizabeth Johnston, an SGA senator, presented one of the two bills that received priority legislation. Her bill proposed to develop a Tennessee Campus Compact that unifies universities with service-learning programs in the state of Tennessee. Thirty states currently have a compact, and if enacted there would be federal funding through the National Campus Compact.
The National Campus Compact also provides training and grant opportunities to state campus compacts and their member campuses.
The other bill that received priority legislation that was written and defended in the Senate by David Lane, and defended in the house by Ashley McCrosky, had to do with yielding to ambulances. Currently in Tennessee, it is illegal for citizens to refuse to yield to police cars and fire trucks in emergencies, but when it comes to ambulances, no one is legally obligated to yield. With the bill that Lane wrote, ambulances would be given the same right in emergencies as police cars and fire trucks. However, the bill also includes legal ramifications for paramedics abusing the privilege.
ETSU also left Nashville with not only the newly elected speaker pro tem of the senate, but possibly two governor’s staff positions and the chief justice for next years TISL.
“We represented the university not only to the best of our ability, but the best I could have asked for and the Senate could have wished for,” said Nate Bailey, the head delegate for ETSU.

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