Editors Note: I’ll now be writing a quick recap of Senate meetings (and the occasional finance committee meetings, when appropriate or humorous.) I’ll usually separate the news part, which will be written in a more objective, just-the-facts-ma’am manner, and the opinion part, which will be… if you’re reading this blog, you should know what to expect.

News:

The ASUO Senate kicked off the new term by quickly dispensing with a rather abbreviated agenda during its weekly meeting January 5, 2011. In a meeting devoid of special requests, budgets or confirmations, a few quick matters were all that stood between the senators and an early trip home.

The first order of business was the proposed Restructuring Resolution, which addressed UO President Richard Lariviere’s New Partnership proposal. The proposal did not specifically address Lariviere’s proposed changes, nor did it suggest any of its own; instead the resolution was written to serve as a statement of values that the Senate would like to see any changes in the structure of the Oregon University System held to. The resolution was presented by Sen. Brian Powell and ASUO President Amelie Rousseau, and passed unanimously.

After filling vacancies on Programs Recognition Review Committee and University Senate left in the wake of Sen. Jackson Hite (Sen. Emma Newman to PRRC, Sen. Chris Bocchicchio to University Senate), the group moved on to a discussion of the process by which the Over-Realized Fund is appropriated. At the  end of a confusing and complicated airing of ideas, a working group consisting of Sens. James Dos Santos, Laura Hinman, Kaitlyn Lange, Powell, Blake Sedgely and Zachary Stark-MacMillan was formed to further explore options for this process.

After concluding with the promise of interviews for potential appointees to the open seats (10:DFC and 12:AAA) starting next week usual officer updates, including ASUO Vice-President Maneesh Arora briefly discussing significant potential changes to the rules governing ASUO’s interaction with the University administration and a brief mentioning of the sale of the EMU’s pool tables, the meeting was adjourned.

Stats:

Meeting duration: 90 mins (no recesses)

Money allocated from surplus: $0

Not present: Brooks, Garcia

No arrivals or departures

Opinion:

The calm before the storm, I suppose. Though I was sad to miss the discussion of the restructuring resolution, the recent rumblings and shakings of the OUS Board make it look more and more like Lariviere’s plan is dead in the water. Shame.

During the discussion of ORF process, Sen. Max Barkley asked why we don’t have a process in place already to deal with ORF in some sort of organized manner. I’m inclined to ask the same question, and the only answers I can come up with are either that in the wake of former ASUO President Sam Dotters-Katz’s ORF funded tax cuts (lets call them what they really are) and the wiping out of ORF last year to pay for a nasty accounting error, ORF is now basically a political football to be tossed back and forth as if though the various members of the ASUO were attempting to impersonate a certain university group that people actually care about.

Not only can the Senate not seem to agree how ORF should be allocated, they can’t even seem to agree what it should be for (well, other than rock concerts, as we learned last term.) One can only hope that, somehow, this year’s cavalcade of young pseudo-lawmakers will leave some sort of roadmap for those who follow after. I don’t want to do this song and dance again next January.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 6th, 2011 at 01:20 by Rockne Andrew Roll and is filed under ASUO, Campus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.