MSA President, Vice President sworn in

By Jenna Youngs

Published Feb. 1, 2008

For junior Jim Kelley, Wednesday’s Missouri Students Association Senate meeting was a much-anticipated formality.

Two months since winning the MSA presidential election, Kelley and running mate Chelsea Johnson were sworn in as the student body’s president and vice president at the first Senate meeting of the semester.

The Senate also approved Kelley’s and Johnson’s appointments for directors of MSA’s executive departments. Junior Rachel Parrish was named director of the Department of Student Activities, senior Billy Eilbracht was approved to lead the Department of Student Communication and junior Jordan Paul was re-appointed to the Department of Student Services after serving as outgoing President Rachel Anderson’s director since August.

Eilbracht is the only appointee without previous MSA experience. During the Senate meeting, he said he’s learning about DSC “day by day” and has many goals for the department.

“It’s important to not only increase productivity externally, but also within the organization,” he said.

Kelley said he was pleased his appointees easily passed through Senate.

“I’m glad that we finally have a team around us,” Kelley said. “We’ve been doing all this by ourselves for the last month, and we’ve now got a great group of people around us.”

Kelley’s appointee for chief of staff, Steve Scott, was not presented to the Senate for approval. Kelley said Scott asked to withdraw his application before the Senate Operations Committee meeting Tuesday night. The Operations Committee must approve appointments before the full Senate can consider them.

“He had concerns about being able to fulfill the requirements of the job,” Kelley said. “After speaking to him, we allowed him to withdraw his application.”

Kelley said he would meet with MSA adviser Farouk Aregbe today to decide how to fill the position.

“I want to make sure we get it right so we won’t have to do this a third time,” Kelley said.

Senate to create digital archive

The Senate approved a resolution to create a digital archive of legislation with the help of Library Digitizing Services. MSA Senate Speaker Jonathan Mays said digitally archiving MSA’s legislation would allow students easier access to information to hold MSA accountable.

“We need to be an accessible group.,” Mays said.

Mays has worked with representatives from the library’s digitizing services to finalize a plan to have the library scan and upload MSA documents from between 1970 and 2000 to the University of Missouri Digital Library. The plan will cost MSA $1 per page of scanned material. Mays said there are 677 pages to scan. Legislation and documents filed since 2001 already are digitally saved and will be included in the archive without charge because nothing needs to be scanned, Mays said.

According to the resolution, Mays will submit 300 pages by today for Digital Services to scan by Feb. 8. MSA will then review the scanned items to see that they’re clear and searchable. If MSA approves of the job, Mays will send the remainder of the 677 pages to be scanned.

“If our expectations are not met, we’ll find another way to do this,” Mays said. “We’re not writing bylaw revisions because we want to make sure the program will work before we make it permanent.”

If approved, MSA would send future legislation and documents to the Digital Library at least once a semester.

Mays said MSA also would begin to identify other documents to scan and preserve in the archive, including correspondence between MSA representatives and administrators. He cited correspondence regarding the Student Recreation Complex and new student center as examples of issues that would be archived.

“This ensures that if the administration tries to go back on an agreement in the future, Senate will easily have what it needs to hold administrators accountable,” Mays said. “It builds more legitimacy.”

Articles of Cooperation updated

Also during the meeting, the Senate approved an act to update its articles of cooperation with Four Front, a coalition of campus minority organizations. Mays said the act changed the previous articles of cooperation to more closely mirror the agreements MSA has with other groups including the Legion of Black Collegians and the Missouri International Student Council.

ASUM funding reduced

The Senate also approved a resolution to cut the student fee that supports Associated Students of the University of Missouri’s from $1.36 to $1.28 and allow MU to contribute a maximum of $8,000 during fiscal year 2009 to ASUM’s central operating budget. ASUM is a system-wide student-lobbying group. MU currently pays $30,000 to ASUM’s $39,000 budget, with each of the other three campuses in the UM system contributing $3,000 each. Mays said MU previously paid more because ASUM’s budget and campus representatives were proportionate to the number of students on each of the four campuses. In the past few years, ASUM has moved to equal representation and Mays said the budget should represent that.

“This year we’re paying for St. Louis, Rolla and Kansas City’s internship programs,” he said. “They should be paying for their own internship programs. They should not get a free lunch on behalf of Columbia students.”