SGA to vote on bylaws

By Matt Quane
mquane@mscd.edu

The Metro Student Government Assembly decided to vote on its policy manual on Oct. 26, contrary to its earlier plans to wait until the senate is filled by the special election taking place this week.

"The senate felt that would be the best course of action," said SGA Speaker of the Senate Jesse Samora, .

Waiting for a fully-elected senate, as opposed to the partially-appointed senate currently making decisions, would have given a large task to the new senators.

"We have already spent time and effort on these, and if we don't sign off on them, we are abdicating our duties to the incoming senate," said Kurt White, an appointed senator who is also running to be elected for his position in the special election.

The idea of the turnaround came as a result of senators second-guessing their own decisions.

"The reasoning (for the original decision) was that a lot of the senators were appointed and that it should be elected senators who pass the bylaws," White said.

But the SGA's decision to speed up the passing of the bylaws came as a defense of the senate's own validity.

"If we start making (the original) rationale, we could undermine all our other decisions," White said.

Due to the difficult task of reviewing the manual, which is over 100 pages in all, the senators have divided the sections among themselves-giving groups of senators either the general, executive or legislative section.

The SGA has also decided to place a 90-day grace period on the amending of the document, which would allow the newly-elected senate to amend the policy manual by a two-thirds vote as it sees fit.

"It's pretty much the standard amending process," White said. "We'll just have 90 days to do it.