MSA cleans up bylaws
Published March 30, 2004
The Missouri Students Association Senate passed six resolutions at its final meeting before spring break. Most of the resolutions were "housekeeping" bills to update the bylaws, several senators said.
The Senate also passed a resolution to establish a special election from April 19 to 21 for students to vote on a revised MSA Constitution. The constitutional revisions have not been approved by the Senate.
"There wasn't enough time to hold debates about the constitution," operations committee chairwoman Amy Engelkenjohn said. "We had a lot of other important resolutions to discuss. It will come up at the next Senate meeting."
Other resolutions that were passed included one stating MSA's support of a tuition increase of no more than 5 percent. An increase at that rate allows for inflation.
The UM system Board of Curators is voting on a proposed 7.5 percent tuition increase at a meeting on Thursday and Friday in St. Louis.
"I'm very excited that there was no opposition to the bill," said MSA vice president Kara Heppermann, who sponsored the bill. "This resolution shows we have the support of the students."
The student government at the University of Missouri-St. Louis passed a similar resolution to show the Board of Curators that students don't want an increase of more than 5 percent, Heppermann said.
"(The Board of Curators) want to make students happy," she said. "We hope the input from the largest UM campus has a lot of influence on their decision."
The most controversial resolution presented at the Senate meeting amended the bylaws to "prevent conflict of interests between ranking members of MSA Senate and other branches of MSA."
The bill passed with an amendment that allows current members to keep their positions in other branches of MSA.
"This is purely a housekeeping issue," Engelkenjohn said. "There were some loopholes we wanted to clean up."
Academic Affairs Chairman Joshua Judy is serving as the chief of staff in the executive branch. He suggested the amendment.
Judy said the change in the bylaws needed to be made, but he's pleased senators supported the amendment to allow him to keep both jobs.
"I'm very relieved people appreciate the work that I do," he said. "I'm not surprised by the debates. When people are passionate, they will voice what they think is right. I'm glad that people stood up and voiced their opinion."
The Senate also passed a bill to revise and clarify Parking and Transportation Review Panel procedures, a bill to clarify who has voting privileges in Senate committee meetings and an act to amend the procedure about concurrent president and vice president vacancies.