So April 28th was the last meeting of the year. Last meetings can be fun because sometimes people swear and say things they’ll probably regret. No such luck this year. However, one thing we can always look forward to is the senate awards. Each senator gets an award based on the impression s/he has made this year. The nicer the award, the smaller the impression. Anyway, I should start at the beginning of the meeting.
And by “the beginning of the meeting,” I really mean the senator speeches which occurred before the meeting. As usual, only those students running for senate attended (to be fair, there was that one other guy… Sam, who also came). I was kind of shocked by how much BS-soaking some of the speeches had. I understand it when students who are new to the senate don’t comprehend the full workings of the senate, but I’m flabbergasted by the incumbent senators who say absurd things. For example, senators talked about increasing the transparency of the senate. Why weren’t they doing that this semester? Why are students promising things during election time when they already had this opportunity all year? Similarly, senators never make or seem to even recognize the difficult choices they have to make. They forcefully demand fiscal responsibility and student accessibility. These things are generally contradictory. The reason why the senate has to give students the run-around and why the senate asks students to go to different departments is to increase fiscal responsibility. But student organizations HATE partial funding. It’s a pain in the ass and decreases accessibility, but you have to choose: fiscal responsibility or accessibility. It’s like tequila and vodka. You can’t have both unless you want a puking mess all over the carpet. Okay, okay, it may not be as stark as that, but senators should be able to make these decisions.
Anyway troops, enough of the soapbox, let’s march onto the meeting. First, we passed discretionary and semester budgets. Scary. It was bad this semester. Like, Val scrod bad. First of all, who knew that martial arts needed two coaches (or “masters” as they’re called in the martial arts)? The senate decided that since no other sports were allowed two coaches, that the Martial Arts Club would be no different. However, the real pickle this meeting was handling two late budgets – BSU and Sailing. These are two clubs that will definitely get funding eventually. We just had to deal with whether or not we should give them funding at that meeting since they turned in their budgets late. BSU was only 5 minutes late, and while I appreciate Anneliese sticking to her guns in not letting BSU go through regular budgetary considerations because they were late, it caused major problems. So after the senate decided that we would fund Sailing and the BSU, we realized that we over-budgeted. That’s bad. Val Mexicorn Lasagna bad (okay, maybe not that bad). Although the senate wanted to give these clubs money, due to procedure, we simply did not have the flexibility the BC has to adjust the numbers. It devolved into a long proceeding full of motions and amendments and amendments on amendments. Parliamentary procedure has nothing on the AAS Senate. I don’t even remember how it turned out… I think we gave the BSU and Sailing partial funding and told them to ask us for the rest through discretionary.
Next, we revisited Josh’s counseling center resolution which the senate passed unanimously. Mike talked about the Constitutional Committee. I’m sure all of you have read our constitution and have productive ideas on how to improve it. Leave any comments below! Then (beware: self-promotion), the senate gave WAMH money to pay an awesome DJ, E-603, for its yearly party. It’s going to be sweet. Friday 10:00. Stone basement (always a good time). Do come. Finally, Josh and Dan De Zeeuw did some math showing us the price each student technically paid to go to Third Eye Blind — $60, in fact. Holy cow. We need to come up with a solution to the monetary fiasco Spring Concert is. Senators are trying to work one out, but if you got a good idea, leave a note below.
Anyway, finally we got to senate awards. Steph Gounder got the Senate award for excellent service which was well deserved. My favorite award this year was the “Pootie Tang” Award given to Peter Tang. Honorable mentions include the “Noah Webster Award for Using the Most Words Nobody has Ever Heard Of” given to none other than Chase Tanenbaum and the “We’re Only Here for Frisbee” Award given to Ronan and Paul (the only remark I remember hearing from this duo this entire semester was Paul who made some comment about the library. It was momentous).
Anyway, last thing I’ll say about this year is that the 08’ senators were fantastic and you will be missed!!
Edits: Thanks to Peter for pointing out a mistake in my entry. It has been corrected!
6 responses so far ↓
1 Dave Ullman (dullman10) // May 7, 2008 at 5:54 pm
There was a brief discussion about the Spring Concert on my blog - check it out here:
http://amhpub.amherst.edu/dullman10/blog/2008/04/23/third-eye-crime/
I think the first correction to make, suggested by Jeff Gang ‘09, is in the wording of the voting. The options for giving PB more money were misleading, as it was unclear how much money PB had at its disposal in the first place. Next year, if PB asks for more money again, their existing fund should be on the record for voters. At the very least, voters should know the total amount of cash going towards Spring Concert before they vote on it.
2 Selena Xie (senate) // May 7, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Dave,
I should have done my research to see what other students were saying about the Spring Concert. If I had, I probably would have thought more seriously about what I wrote (I know I can change it, but I feel like I shouldn’t since you commented). What I find funny is that when Program Board came to us asking to put a referendum online, we said yes but gave them the power to word it as they pleased. In a later vote: http://www.amherst.edu/~aas/voting/results/1204779600/ Program Board requested that leave out all mention that the artist was Third Eye Blind. The senate balked at that idea, but you’re right, we should have exercised more control over the wording of the first ballot.
Additionally, I’d like to throw out the solution that Josh and Dan threw out which I decided not to include in my entry. They want Amherst to just pay for each student to go to a concert within the New England area. So each student could get one ticket to go see Tokyo Police Club when they came to Northampton a few weeks ago or MIA at Mount Holyoke. While this seems more cost effective and allows everyone to see someone they want to, there are, of course, many obvious objections. Many schools have Spring Concerts so so should we; it brings the campus together; it creates tradition; etc. etc. Anyway just another radical idea for everyone to think about.
3 irradient (yhuang11) // May 7, 2008 at 11:41 pm
“The senate decided that since no other sports were allowed two coaches, that the Martial Arts Club would be no different. ”
You really screwed up on this one, Senate.
It’s called the Amherst MIXED Martial Arts Club, which means we train in various different styles. Unlike other club sports, the ranks that are earned in Isshinryu Karate can carry over to dojos (classrooms) across the nation, as long as the Sensei (teacher) accepts the student’s rank.
The reason why I put so much emphasis on “mixed” is that students are also taught the style of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, or BJJ, for short. The whole point of the club is so we can train to become better practitioners of the martial arts: and that includes knowing how to fight from the ground. This is the reason why we need two coaches: they are not from the same style, and despite what the Senate may think, they are not redundant.
I’m sure the club presidents have made a similar line of argument. I hope EVERYONE reading this blog and the author of this blog will realize that there is more to the story than a simple dismissal of “two coaches = unacceptable.” You talked about transparency: how about including the arguments of both sides, then?
4 Peter Tang (ptang10) // May 7, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Quick Edit: The Crew team did not submit their budget late; it was the Sailing team.
5 Jeff Gang (jgang09) // May 8, 2008 at 12:22 am
I Hereby Nominate Messrs. Tim Deary ‘09 and Adam “Slumps” Kaufman ‘09
for “We’re Only Here for Frisbee” Award 2009.
Man, other clubs should start abusing their mass email lists for write-ins, too.
http://www.amherst.edu/~aas/voting/results/1209614400/
6 Selena Xie (senate) // May 8, 2008 at 12:46 am
irradient,
You’re right that the president of the Mixed Martial Arts Club did explain to us that there are different styles involved which require different coaches. I don’t think, however, that it’s fair to say that the Senate really screwed this one up. I was the one who screwed up. I hastily dismissed the Mixed Martial Arts Club in this entry (unfortunately, I have to pick and choose what to put in this blog), but the senate did spend a lot of time deliberating this issue which is why I wanted to mention it. While the senate understands that the Mixed Martial Arts Club actually brings together different varieties of the martial arts, we did not think it was fair to all the other clubs on campus who are only allowed to have one coach and could probably come up with valid reasons for needing two. We also made this decision based on how many students attend compared to other events and simply decided that it was not cost effective.
It does irk me that you bring up the issue of transparency. I don’t think that’s applicable here. I wasn’t suppressing the facts, I was just offering the reason why the Senate said no to the Mixed Martial Arts Club.
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