Student Senate passed a vote to redistribute the seats of student senators last week.
The seat distribution originally allowed for one student senator from each individual academic district.
“Basically, our current senate seat distribution is not, in the opinion of the student senate, an accurate portrayal of representation on campus”, said Nicolas Rhodes, vice president of Student Government Association. “Amendments to the seat distribution were considered on the floor of senate in attempts to get a version that we believe is the best for senate moving forward.”
The revised edition will take into account the population of students in each school and allow for more representatives for larger student bodies. There will be 18 senators in six different academic fields,
- Performing Arts,
- Arts and Sciences,
- Business school,
- Freshman at large,
- Graduate/Law at large, and
- International at large.
Each district will receive a minimum of one seat and the district with the most registered students will receive another four seats and the other two will receive three. The Student Senate Steering Committee will determine the apportionment every three years based on the number of enrolled students according to the registrar.
“”I like this system, before the students weren’t actually equally representing the population of the school,” said Arash Allahyar, senior senator at large.
This amendment will follow the referendum process, which means that 5% of the population of the school will need to sign a petition to vote and 15% of the student body must vote with a simple majority before the amendment can pass.
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