More competitive elections and a voter turnout nearly three-times higher than during last year’s midterm elections have helped to solidify Student Union’s importance to the campus as a legislative body, say four departing senators.

At the Nov. 5 Senate meeting, those senators made closing remarks reflecting on their tenure as Student Union (SU) senators. All four senators noted significant improvements within Senate since entering their positions as underclassmen.

In her closing remarks, senior Carson Smith, a senator for three and a half years and past Speaker of the Senate, said that much has changed in the recent years, before which some students used regret serving on the SU Senate.

“There is now more of a culture in Senate where you really feel like it is something through which you can help people on campus,” Smith said. “You feel you are almost more empowered as a senator because you are getting more done now.”

During the meeting, junior and departing senator Kaushik Srinivasan also said that SU senators have been more productive and found greater satisfaction in their work.

Smith attributed the transformation to better organization within the legislative body and a clearer definition of the Senate’s function in the student body.

Three separate committees within Senate—academic affairs, campus services and university initiative—coordinate to develop specific resolutions.

Junior and former University Initiative Committee Chair Alex Rosenberg, who will be leaving the Senate to study abroad next semester, observed that committee members now work with improved coordination to settle on a single resolution.

As committee chair, Rosenberg worked to lead the creation of an alumni connection program, scheduled to be implemented next semester.

“Before, the body wasn’t doing very much. There were a lot of motivated people, but we weren’t really doing anything,” Rosenberg said. “By having 10 people focusing on one project we hope to gain more than having 10 people focusing on 10 individual projects.”

Established as a separate entity from Treasury in fall of 2002, the Student Union Senate is a relatively new legislative body. When she first started as a senator, Smith found inefficiency during Senate meetings—when senators often debated over the very role of the SU Senate.

“Treasury had just been split from Senate so it was still kind of trying to see where it fit now that money allocation had been given to Treasury,” Smith said. “I think it’s natural for any new body to kind of wonder at first, or look around to see exactly what it is what they are supposed to be doing.”

Current Speaker of the Senate Jordan Aibel, however, said that Senate has found an increasingly clearer role for itself.

“[Our role] is to work with the students and administration, serving as a conduit between and resource for both of those groups. And to work on projects relating to issues that students, administration, staff have identified as particularly pressing or relevant to the undergraduate community,” Aibel said.

In the most recent elections for the Senate, 18 students ran for 10 open Senate seats—three times the number who ran last year during midterm elections, according to Aibel.

According to Aibel and Rosenberg, this increase in senatorial candidates is the product of Senate’s increased visibility on campus. Though he has only been on campus for a year and a half, Aibel also observed that the current senators show greater interest in representing the student body interest than previous years’ senators.

“People did it out of a sense of what it could do it for them, but now I see senators coming in saying, “What can I do to bring something to the school community?” That’s a much more healthy and productive way of going about being a senator,” he said.

While the Senate communicates with the University administration, it may have to improve its communication with the student body.

“We need to keep our goals in mind. Whatever it is we do, students [should] play a huge part in it, and want to take part in it,” Aibel said.

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Tags: senate, Student Union, su

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