Student Senate meets at Capitol

The Student Senate of Southern University held their first official meeting on Thursday, Sept. 18 in the Senate chambers of the Louisiana State Capitol. The only glitch in the delayed meeting was a lack of quorum—the minimum number of members required to conduct business—because a freshman senator was in a backlogged car pile-up in the northbound lanes of Interstate 110.
The 16 student senators had a heavy agenda, with eight regular session bills, among them, the Lynn Dickerson measure, and both acts of ‘For the People,’ which were recently passed in the Senate and Government Affairs Committee. The senators also wanted to amend both governing documents of the SGA—the Constitution and the Bylaws.
While waiting for the first regular session to begin, SGA President Jamal Taylor stated that he was “concerned.”
“I’m concerned about the bills,” he said. “I’m concerned about the integrity of the organization, about procedures. None of these proxies are legal by law that I have seen.”
Proxies, according to answers.com, are “the authority to act for another, a person authorized to act for another; an agent or substitute.”
The only legislation to fail was an amendment, Senate Bill No. 5, authored by Bino Rasedisa, an international senator from Gaborone, Botswana, Baton Rouge native Philip Wallace, a junior senator, along with colleague Philip Robinson. The amendment sought to omit Article 3, section 16 of the Bylaws of the Student Government Association, which refers to ‘Legislative Affairs’ Section 16 states, “By petition of no less than ten undergraduate students, certified by signature, printed name, and University issued identification number, a resolution or bill may be presented on the floor of the Senate for consideration, subject to a seconding motion by a Senator.”
The final vote to the controversial amendment was 9-7, amidst debate that the amendment would remove student rights to visibility of their student leaders. Opposition to SB 5 argued that the Senate was attempting to coerce the accountability of the organization, while authors Wallace, Rasedisa and Robinson agreed that section 16 was time consuming and tedious.
A major concern to several members of the Senate body was time management and efficiency, passing SB 6, also by Rasedisa, which omitted Article 13, section 2 which states that “two-thirds vote of the voting Student Body in a given election and approval of the administration.” The article refers to amendments to the student constitution, which may only be amended by two ways.
Senate bills seven, eight and nine allotted $1,500, among three student organizations, while SB 10 ordered the publicizing of Senate members’ e-mail addresses.
Stasha Rhodes, SGA Vice President and Senate President was pleased with the overall business of the night.
“I believe it (the meeting) was very important for them (the student leadership). This was an extraordinary thing, and a landmark for Southern University.”
In keeping with checks and balances, as well as efficiency, Robinson, along with Wallace believed that the meeting was “productive, ” but Robinson wanted to make sure that the university community knew that in terms of the SGA Constitution, “Constitutionality should be kept in the hands of the Judiciary, and not the Legislature.”