Councilmembers were remarkably boisterous for the first A.S. meeting of the quarter, which coincidentally fell on April Fools’ Day.
Associate Vice President of Programming Garrett Berg gave a special presentation on this year’s Sun God Festival, promising a slew of positive changes for the May 15 event. Berg and his office are hoping to get the colleges more involved with activities in the week leading up to the event, to create a campuswide Sun God spirit and compensate for the fact that the entire campus would not be open to festival-related antics.
A number of joke legislation pieces were submitted to the order of business, including an A.S. Support of Human Life document and an A.S. Resolution Against Resolutions.
Nearly an hour was spent on laughter-filled discourse about pretend bills in committee.
‘Can we get on to real stuff, because I’m getting tired,’ Revelle College Senator Katie Hall finally said, interrupting colleagues’ quips.
After a brief discussion of whether April 20 should be declared Meghan Clair Day in honor of All-Campus Senator Meghan Clair ‘mdash; the motion failed ‘mdash; the council moved on to real bills in committee.
The evening’s major piece of legislation involved changes to the A.S. Constitution that would eliminate voting powers of the vice presidents and president. It would also give the president veto power, which could be overridden by a three-fourths vote by the senate.
‘I thought this was an April Fools’ joke when I first saw it,’ All-Campus Senator Chris Westling said before explaining his discomfort with granting the position of president veto power.
The council decided to split the two issues for separate discussion and spent two hours discussing whether the executives should have voting power.
Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs Lana Blank informed the council that the recommended constitutional changes were consistent with the constitution that preceded the last two years, adding that she did not believe the current system of giving the executives voting privileges has helped unify the council.
‘I think we did have a better functioning senate and exec with the old system,’ Sixth College Senator John Cressey said. ‘Too often we’ve seen the interest of offices supercede the interest of the students.’
In the end, the council remained undecided on the changes. The verdict on whether the executives should be able to vote will be resolved with a open roll call vote to be tallied this Friday. The issue of whether the president will have veto power was tabled for a week.
Patience around the room was noticeably wearing thin as side conversations picked up toward the end of the meeting, forcing A.S. Speaker Jordan Taylor to bang his gavel. Councilmembers were reminded of the date and tried to lighten the mood before scurrying out of the forum chambers to enjoy the remainder of a day of pranks.