By: Nayra Halajian
On Oct. 13, the Associated Students of the University of Puget Sound (ASUPS) had to reapprove all of the items they had already voted on in the Fall 2016 semester thus far.
ASUPS Vice President Lydia Bauer said, “None of us realized that anything was off until Kathryn Queirolo… came in and was basically like ‘I’ve been looking at the bylaws and you all haven’t had official quorum.’”
In order to have quorum, a two-thirds minimum of Senate members must be in the meeting to make the proceedings of that meeting valid. For ASUPS, nine people must be present in the room.
“We’ve had a real shortage of senators until this last election because we had three people medically withdraw, and for a few other people [being a senator] just wasn’t for them. We had a really small amount so it made having quorum at Senate a lot harder because everyone still had busy lives,” Bauer said.
The issue came up when members of the Senate could not show up to meetings and were proxy voting instead. This means they were sending in their vote on issue prior to quorum.
“If you got your request to proxy a vote to the Senate Chair before Senate, your vote still counted. This is how proxy works, as long as there’s physical quorum in the room,” Bauer said.
The problem was that there weren’t enough senators in the room to have quorum, therefore the passing of everything they had done for the entire semester was not valid.
“It was weird because it didn’t seem like it should delegitimize what we had already done, but, at the same time, that wasn’t how things were supposed to be done,” said Bauer.
Minutes from the Senate meeting of October 13 state: “The Governance committee has decided that we did not have the proper quorum to approved items 16-204 through 16-231 with the exception of item 16-228 and 16-226 (unfinished business, and a rejected item respectively) and including 16-141.”
The Governance committee recognized the mistake they had made and created a resolution to fix the issue, without having to re-discuss all that had already been passed.
The “Resolution on an Omnibus Retroactive Re- Certification of Early Fall 2016 Legislative Action” was voted on and passed.
The resolution, as expressed through the meeting minutes stated, “The ASUPS Senate hereby renews and re-certifies the legitimate passage of items 16- 204 through 16-231 with the exception of item 16-228 and 16-226, including 16-141.”
Now that the resolution has passed and more Senate positions have been filled, ASUPS can continue its business as usual.
Reflecting on the issues, Bauer said, “there are a lot of guidelines to follow and sometimes they don’t make the most sense for what the timeline really is. I feel like stuff like this will always happen and it’s good that people hold us accountable to it because we have those rules in place for a reason.”
As stated in the ASUPS Principles, “Our practice seeks to be radically inclusive of all members of community.” Keeping ASUPS accountable to quorum ensures representation and helps to uphold this principle.
When asked about getting more senators, Bauer stated, “It’s really hard. We just had an election with seven seats open. We got six new senators. Now we have two seats up for election and that’s Junior Class Senator and Off-Campus Senator.”
Fall 2016 Special Elections for Junior Class Senator and Off-Campus Senator are Nov. 8. Students can vote in in the Wheelock Student Center.