Senators closed out the final meeting this semester with one proposal and several amendments to the constitution.

SAME-DAY PROPOSAL

• Sophomore Evan Tan, Associated Students controller and future vice president of finances, requested $1,468 to cover the facilities charges for the For and Against Calvinism event which took place last semester. According to Tan, funds should have been taken out of the budget last semester but were not; AS was not billed for it, so the money rolled back into contingency. The senators passed it unanimously. 

CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES

• Senior Luke Robinson, Sigma senator, requested a constitutional change to further define the requirement of a two-thirds majority vote, which is required for constitutional changes. The new section would clarify that a two-thirds supermajority would mean a proportion equaling or greater than 0.666 … of the voting senate. The ratification passed.

• Senators unanimously approved another request from Robinson to increase the number of paid staff for the Social Board to four paid staff because the constitution currently only allows for two paid staff. The increase would fall in line with next year’s budget and Social Board restructure.

• The senate unanimously passed a proposal that aimed to specify who would be on the AS and SMU elections committee, which would include one member of the executive board, one senator, one coordinator and one representative from SMU. Robinson, who presented the proposal, said that the new provision was necessary to avoid conflicts of interest in certain races.

  “I think the point of the committee is to be distant and objectively distant,” said senior Kevin Mitchell, Off-Campus Community senator.

• The senate also approved a proposal to add a section to the constitution regarding speaking in the senate. The amendment would allow for any officer in AS or administrator to be brought into the senate if approved by the majority of senators. Senators said an internal restructure, like the Social Board restructure proposal last week, would be one of the instances where it would be beneficial to hear both sides of the proposal.

• Senators passed a proposal to reword bylaw IV section IV.2 in the constitution to emphasize the authority of the adviser and senior director of human resources to terminate senators. Robinson said he and the other senators sometimes felt pressured to vote a certain direction that did not align with their constituents because they thought the president and executive board held the power to fire senators.