Michael Tabb | Student Life

Members of Student Union vote on Wednesday evening.

The change, pending majority approval by SU Treasury and two-thirds of the student body, would cut six seats—four from the College of Arts & Sciences, one from the engineering school and one from the business school.

Senators J.R. Davis and Neel Desai sponsored the amendment. They stressed it would improve competition for SU Senate, making sure people who win seats genuinely want the job, and pressure senators to perform their work.

Three vice presidents of administration have failed to pass the amendment in the past several years. This is the first time it was sponsored by students outside of SU’s executive branch.

Junior Mamatha Challa, vice president of administration, said she was pleased that the amendment she proposed two weeks ago ultimately made it past its first hurdle.

“I’m really excited,” she said. “This is probably the first time it’s been proposed by the senators themselves, which was one of the strengths about it.”

The amendment to SU’s constitution needed two-thirds of the vote to pass. The final vote was 15-7 with 1 abstention; senators were holding bated breath as Speaker of the Senate Dan Robinson verified that the abstaining vote didn’t count against the measure.

Robinson said that while he tries to remain impartial, he was particularly pleased with the group’s discussion concerning the change.

“I think that we had a really productive dialogue in the body,” Robinson said. “I’m glad senators were able to put forth [the] initiative.”

While some senators voiced concern about the amendment ultimately discouraging students from running for SU Senate, numerous freshmen considering running for office said they approve of the legislation.

“I’m glad that they were able to get it through so that everyone can vote on it—this gives the entire school the opportunity to vote on how they are represented,” said freshman Hamilton Cook, from the School of Engineering & Applied Science.

Madhana Pandian, a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences, said the arguments in favor of the change transformed her initial doubts.

“When it was first introduced I had all negative thoughts, because the first thing that came to mind was that the increased competition would make it impossible for freshmen to get on Senate…but I really did side with the decision that was made at the end. The people on the pro side did a really good job of presenting their argument,” she said. “I also really enjoyed the open discussion on both sides.”

Speaker for the Treasury, junior Julian Nicks, said he does not envision the constitutional amendment being nearly as contentious when Treasury considers passing it next week.

“I don’t think it’ll be nearly as hot of a debate,” he said. “I don’t imagine it being even close to this much discussion.”

Treasury member Sean Janda, a sophomore, echoed his sentiments.

“I think that if Senate is going to pass it…it only affects their body, so I think Treasury should pass it as well,” he said.

The change proposed cutting Senate’s size from 28 to 22 members. This would increase competition for spots and thus ensure seats go to people who would take advantage of them, said junior Mamatha Challa, vice president of administration for SU.

Challa, who served as speaker of the Senate last year, sponsored the constitutional change.

After a discussion fluctuating from supportive to critical and even hostile, the final vote was 14-10, but required two-thirds of Senate’s votes to pass.

Seven of the 10 dissenting votes were from senators in the College of Arts & Sciences, which would have lost four of its 16 seats. The other two seats would have been taken from the engineering and business schools.

Numerous senators at the meeting spoke in favor of the change.

“I’ve been around the block a while, and…it looks bad when we don’t have enough people running for these spots,” senior Becca Craig said. “We’ve had so many initiatives and outreach chairs and other projects to try and increase the amount of people running and the retention—and it’s not working…this is what will work.”

But as discussion over the legislation intensified, senators started defending their schools’ seats, and comments became increasingly pointed.

“Under the Student Union constitution, the role of the vice president of administration is to maintain the interest and involvement of those participating in Student Union, and this amendment seems to clearly contradict the constitution by limiting involvement,” freshman Senator Michael Byrne said. “To come in and think about deciding on a constitutional amendment with very little time to go over it—I think is kind of ridiculous.”

Challa noted that most of the votes against the amendment were from newer senators who may not be as familiar with long-time efforts to solve the body’s involvement issues.

This was not the first time students have looked to decrease Senate’s size.

Student Life editorials from as far back as 2006 have noted that cutting seats could restore competition to the Senate, keeping write-in candidates from getting spots they don’t care about. In the past three years, Challa is the third SU vice president of administration to push for the change. And she’s the third to have her vision cut short.

Although Challa could pursue other means of getting the amendment passed without a two-thirds Senate majority, she said she doesn’t want to advance an agenda if it’s not what the body wants, and she’s contemplating how to move past Wednesday night’s decision.

“I don’t want to do something that the Senate body truly doesn’t want to do; however, if there’s room for senators possibly changing their mind with more communication about the issue, then I may move forward with it,” Challa said. “I wouldn’t be comfortable going forward with this if I can’t get two-thirds of Senate to be in support of it.”

Thirteen students applied last week for the one open spot in SU Treasury, and 12 applied for the two open Arts & Sciences seats in SU Senate.

Speaker of the Senate Dan Robinson, a senior, hopes the high level of interest will create momentum going into the fall SU elections.

He hopes to extend student interest in SU through to the fall election cycle.

“If we can translate this interest to fall elections, we’ll have fall elections that are much more competitive than usual,” Robinson said. “The election commission is working to get the word out…to make sure those are as competitive as possible.”

This is the third year in a row that SU Senate has begun the year with six empty Senate seats, despite continued focus on retention and recruitment.

Robinson said that two of the senate seats opened up when former senators took on SU leadership roles; three were due to members’ time constraints; one—one of the two business school seats—was never actually filled in the first place.

“The final one was an administrative mistake on our part. We didn’t fill enough business seats. There wasn’t a second person running, but one should have been appointed immediately,” he said.

According to Robinson, the applicants are primarily freshmen, but a number of sophomores also applied for the vacated seats.

Most of the seats being appointed, including all of the Arts & Sciences seats, will be put to a vote in the SU elections this November.

Senators are typically voted into office in general student body elections, and school councils appoint students to fill spots that become vacant throughout the year. But between spring and fall, when school councils are transitioning, spots are often left open.

While the Business and Engineering School Councils are conducting their own interviewing process, Robinson said that the Arts & Sciences School Council asked him to fill their two seats.

Robinson will be filling the seats after interviews. He says his decisions will be based on the applicants’ interests and interpersonal skills.

“I’m looking for someone that comes in with the right mindset—who comes in really ready to make changes, but someone who’s also willing to work as part of a larger group,” he said.

Robinson also said that at least five of the six open Senate seats should be filled within the next two weeks. The art school and architecture school, he said, may take a few more weeks to fill seats.

Architecture School Council President Sean Dula, a sophomore, is looking for anyone interested in the position.

“The school is just so small,” Robinson said. “I’m confident they’ll find someone; it just may take a little longer.”

While Robinson could potentially fill the architecture seat with one of the numerous applicants from Arts & Sciences, he said that it would undermine the Senate’s balance.

“The reason why we have the school seats is to give the smaller schools a voice,” Robinson said.

Speaker of the Treasury Julian Nicks, a junior, said the increased student interest in SU Treasury is a pleasant change.

“It was nice to see such interest,” Nicks said. “It made it a difficult decision, but I’d much rather have it be a difficult decision than be self-selecting.”

Students outside of SU are ambivalent about the process.

“I feel like it should be a democratic process,” sophomore Elizabeth Crowell said. “I’m sure there are many pros and cons to the situation.”

Others are comfortable with the measure as long as it’s only temporary.

“I think that’s fine as long as there’s still elections,” junior Amy Cole said.

Still, Robinson said that the empty seats have not had a significant effect on the body’s ability to carry out its function.

“As speaker for a number of weeks now, I wouldn’t say that our ability to do our work has been hampered by this at all,” he said. “It’s definitely not unprecedented.”

Michael Tabb | Student Life

Student Union Treasury representatives vote unanimously to pass the 2011-2012 Student Union General Budget at Wednesday’s joint session of Senate and Treasury. Senate also unanimously passed the proposed budget.

Overall, senators and Treasury representatives had few problems with the budget, which enabled the relatively speedy approval process.

“I feel that for the most part, this budget advocates for students,” said Senator Matt Re, a freshman. “From what I’ve seen, we’re not doing anything that’s really bad.”

This year’s budget, which was drafted by junior Cody Katz, vice president of finance, includes several major changes from the 2010-2011 budget.

The budget does not include an allocation for Athletic Complex funding; it includes an appeals account to encourage Treasury to fund a large speaker, increased funding to the Senior Class Council and an allocation for higher Student Union operational costs.

The total budget is $2,484,907, an amount equal to 1 percent of every student’s tuition.

SU President John Harrison York, a junior, and Katz met with every SU representative before the meeting to ensure that all basic questions were answered and that the vote would progress smoothly.

Although every line of the budget passed nearly unopposed, discussion over a few aspects of the budget kept SU representatives occupied until around midnight.

One such aspect, the inclusion of an emergency equipment appeals account, spurred such discussion. The account, which is required by the SU Constitution, has no money in it.

Katz argued against filling the account so that student groups could file an emergency appeal for funding if the need exists, without being limited by the amount of money in the account.

“The way I view an emergency appeal is something that’s an emergency,” Katz said, explaining that he is hesitant to put money into an account where it might not be used up.

Still, KWUR Treasurer Andrew Warshauer referred back to an incident this year when the radio station needed to replace malfunctioning equipment. He said that it was only by chance that SU had the funding to replace it, and that there should be an appeals account to directly fund such incidents.

Michael Tabb | Student Life

Some Treasury representatives were disappointed in the lack of flexibility available in the budget.

“If you add up our overhead service charge, our more-required campus contributions and our operation costs…these are things that are required by the University before we start even paying for anything,” said Treasury Representative Paul Blachar, a sophomore. “I don’t know if there’s anything we can do about it, but to me it’s kind of unfair.”

No one has voted against an SU budget since 2008, when the Senate rejected the “YOU for WU” slate’s proposal that would have cut funding significantly for KWUR and Mr. Wash U.

This is the first year that Senate and Treasury have held a joint discussion on the budget. They did this both to increase efficiency and avoid holding the Treasury vote during the regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, which was the second night of Passover. Student Union Treasury and Senate passed the 2011-2012 budget unanimously on Wednesday night in less than three hours.

Matt Mitgang | Student Life

Bartley, nominee for DAC Chair, speaks to Student Union Senate on Wednesday night before being unanimously approved.

The council (DAC) was founded last spring because of a constitutional amendment. It stemmed from the Mother’s bar incident and is supposed to create an institutionalized focus on issues of diversity, as well as train diversity groups like Mixed, Connect4, SARAH and Uncle Joe’s, which are now more coordinated.

“[Part of what started the DAC] was a lot of people realizing [that] there were gaps in how the student body was approaching diversity,” Bartley said.

Bartley, who formerly served as public relations chair of the DAC, hopes that the DAC will serve as an advocacy body for students, an informational resource and a framework for creating and investigating policies, as well as encouraging diversity on campus.

Though DAC still has no mission statement, Bartley outlined the group’s goals as “continuing efforts to create an inclusive environment on campus.”

“I think it’s important that a national university reflects the nation, and that’s not necessarily what’s going on right now,” Bartley said.

Currently, Bartley is focused more on creating a structure than carrying out the DAC’s eventual functions.

“Right now our main focus is to define our structure,” Bartley said. “My goal is to solidify a structure that will be sustainable for the people that come after us, and we’re really starting from zero.”

Being able to move slowly to make the DAC something of an institution was part of the reason for making it a permanent part of SU.

The structure is also integral to carrying out its function. Last year, current senior Greg Schweizer, that year’s DAC chair, started to look into the ways that students self-segregate on campus.

“It was hard to take on such an ambitious project with something that had to be built from the ground up,” Schweizer said. “I think that the DAC is more complicated than people expect because it has no money and it has really ambitious goals, so I think that being able to hand off something that’s really refined and ready to go is top priority.”

Schweizer has since resigned his position because he felt like he didn’t have enough time to commit to the project. He is confident that Bartley will be successful in the position.

“Shana is incredibly passionate about diversity. She has great connections on campus and I think she’ll do a phenomenal job,” Schweizer said.

Though structure is a primary issue, Bartley does hope that students will approach the DAC.

“[Students] will have a body to go to and say that these are our concerns or they can come to us and say, ‘This is what happened to me, what can I do now?’” Bartley said.

In addition to helping out individual students, Bartley has already started looking into changes that can be made on campus.

The DAC is already looking into the having the admissions office provide brochures in different languages.

“Oftentimes families are part of these decisions, and we feel that incoming students should have these options to involve their families in a language that they’re comfortable with,” Bartley said.

“In my perspective, diversity is about collaboration as much as it is about a bunch of people being passionate,” she added. “It’s about getting multiple perspectives together to find something that’s really sustainable and effective at making change on campus.”

The DAC does not receive any funds from SU or other sources. It is currently seeking a sixth chair member. An application is available on SU website.

WUPD issued a report last week saying that a student assaulted two others while at a Halloween party in the Rutledge residence hall on the South 40. The assault was reported to the police on Nov. 2.

A Student Life investigation found that sophomore Eric Potter struck sophomore Michael Biehl as well as another girl at a Halloween party on Oct. 30 in Rutledge.

A police investigation into the assaults found that the conflict started earlier that week during an incident that involved fraternity members and that was possibly hazing.

“It appeared as a result of our investigation there were some practices that some in the investigation indicated were part of sort of historical acts by members of the fraternity,” WUPD Chief of Police Don Strom said. Strom did not discuss which students were involved with the assault or the incident leading up to the assault, what fraternity was found to be connected with the incident, or what the incident was.

Potter is a brother in the Sigma Nu fraternity, and Biehl was at the time in the process of pledging membership to Sigma Nu.

Earlier that week, on Oct. 28, Potter and another Sigma Nu brother mock kidnapped Biehl’s girlfriend, sophomore Michelle Chen, shortly before 9 p.m. at Simon Hall, according to Chen. The two bound her ankles and covered her mouth with duct tape, according to Chen. Chen described the mock kidnapping as a game, and said that she had agreed to participate in it beforehand. Potter and the other student took a photograph of Chen that they intended to send to Biehl.

The two then removed the duct tape from Chen’s mouth and suggested to her that they carry her to the Student Union Senate meeting with her feet still bound. Chen, an SU senator, said she initially laughed at the suggestion, although she was not OK with it. Chen said she did not want to be put into that situation, which she did not think was appropriate. She told the two that she did not want to be dropped off at the meeting while she was being carried to it.

Potter could not be reached for comment.

The two then dropped her off at the meeting, which was in progress, in Simon 113. Chen said that she thought it was possible that there was a miscommunication in the situation.

As she was entering the Senate meeting with her feet bound, Chen fell and was assisted by Senators Robyn Michaelson and Mike Post. Chen then re-entered the room and attended the meeting.

Chen said she considers what happened to have been a prank that went too far.

Sigma Nu President David Ingber said that Sigma Nu investigated the matter internally and found that the students involved with the assault at the Halloween party had relations with Sigma Nu but the assault was an isolated incident that was not associated with the fraternity.

“They [Biehl and Potter] were freshman roommates,” Ingber said. “Whatever happened between them is much bigger and larger than anything that happened at Sig Nu. There is a clear distinction between the events that occurred and Sigma Nu in the fact that they are separate entities and separate things.”

Chen said she does not feel what happened reflects on Sigma Nu as a whole, and she does not blame the fraternity for what happened.

Strom said that because the incident leading up to the assault was possibly hazing, the case will be reviewed per standard protocol by the county’s prosecuting attorney office in January.

“I think most people who’ve looked at it have said, ‘It’s kind of a close call,’ and I think that’s what people really want to delve into a little further with it,” Strom said.

Ingber noted that Sigma Nu was founded on a principle of no hazing.

“That statement of no hazing is something that we as a house and organization take unbelievably seriously,” Ingber said.

Ingber said he was not aware of any incidents involving mock kidnapping occurring in the past.

“This is nothing I have ever heard of in the past, and nothing that we have done, or ever done to my knowledge,” Ingber said.

Because the students who were assaulted at the party are not requesting prosecution, WUPD has referred further handling of the case to the judicial administrator.

Senior Kevin Smith, president of the Interfraternity Council, said that the Greek Life Standards Board is not investigating allegations of hazing by Sigma Nu.

Director of Greek Life Michael Hayes could not be reached for comment and left town to go on vacation on Thursday, but a representative from the Greek Life Office said that the case had been discussed.

Biehl recently stopped pledging Sigma Nu. Biehl said this was not related to the assault or the incident leading up to it, and he made the decision that Greek life was not for him independently of what happened.

While the SU meeting was momentarily stopped by Chen’s unusual entrance, the meeting proceeded as normal.

“I had no idea what was going on,” Speaker of the Senate Chase Sackett said. “It was confusing.”

“It seemed like the general consensus was it would be taken care of, and she came back in a few moments anyway,” freshman Senator Mamatha Challa said.

The University hazing policy states, “Any activity organized by a student organization, or members of a student organization, which involves a member in practices which are injurious, or potentially injurious to an individual’s physical, emotional, or psychological well being (as determined at the sole discretion of the University) shall be immediate cause for disciplinary action.”

Dan Woznica, Michelle Merlin and Perry Stein contributed reporting

Amy Heard, Chase Sackett and Greg Schweizer, all Student Union (SU) senators from Arts & Sciences, have established Senate Outreach Week—an initiative intended to have senators connect to the students they represent while making students aware that senators are there to respond to their concerns.

“We’d done a better job of having contact with the administration last semester,” Sackett, a junior, said. “So this semester we’re trying to connect with students and bring it full-circle.”

That effort has included SU senators tabling in the Danforth University Center every day this week with a display about how the senate works, and what Heard calls “active outreach” on Thursday and Friday in public places on campus.

“We’re going to be walking around and talking to students, seeing what their views are on senate, seeing what they know, if they have any concerns,” Heard, a sophomore, said.

While the three organizers have tried to stay in touch with the campus pulse since joining SU, Sackett says that the difference is that they now hope to establish an organized system in Senate to stay in touch with students.

That system will revolve around “senator-constituent e-mails,” or e-mails that each senator will send out to a group of students on a regular basis, which started on Wednesday. The e-mails, the senators hope, will set the groundwork for each student to know that he or she has a senator representing him or her.

The senators hope, in turn, that by associating a face or a name with Senate, students will feel more comfortable bringing their concerns to the body.

“We obviously talk to a lot of people, but there hasn’t been that structure there,” Sackett said. “Constituent e-mails are something we’ve seen as missing. It’s one component in a greater whole of what we’re going to try to do.”

The proposed program is in many ways a resurrection of the Personal Senators Program that SU stopped two years ago. While the senators recognize that that project did not succeed, they say that this project includes changes that will make it more sustainable.

One of those changes is that students will be assigned to a seat in Senate rather than to a specific senator, meaning that if a senator graduates or leaves the position, students will have a successor with whom they can connect.

Heard added that another goal of the new program is to shift attention to the schools outside of Arts & Sciences. Although a senator will represent students from her school, the body wants all students to feel that the whole senate speaks for them.

“We want to focus on more than just the senators from their school,” Schweitzer, a sophomore, said of students outside of Arts & Sciences, “so that they feel like they’re involved with everyone on campus and that it’s more of a cohesive unit than separated by school, by what your interests are.”

Although the Senate has contacted SU Treasury regarding the initiative, Schweizer said that one of their goals was to create an identity for Senate separate from that of the Treasury. Schweitzer said students are more aware of Treasury than of Senate because Treasury deals with funding issues and communicates with the heads of student groups.

“We’re trying to establish what Senate itself does,” Schweizer said. “Students are concerned about Treasury, and the [SU] executive is more visible. We’re trying to show what we can do as senators and make sure that people know that there is a second branch and that they can bring their concerns to us as well.”

As a result of this program, the senators hope that they will be able to act as more of a liaison between Senate and the administration, and that this will enable senators to come to administrators with more student support for their proposals.

“If more students buy in, the more power we have to actually get the administration to enact the change that students want,” Sackett said. “We’re doing what students want and we’re getting the administration to do what students want.”

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