Jordan Cuddemi
News Editor
The Dec. 6 Student Assembly meeting brought forth the first student forum discussion of the year.
The sophomore class is experiencing multiple individuals who have conflicts with Student Assembly’s 6:30 p.m. Tuesday meeting time.
Two sophomore representatives who sit on behalf of the sophomore class, Erin Donnelly and Jeffrey Bradley, will potentially lose their student government positions because they cannot attend the meeting time, which is a requirement for being on Student Assembly.
The sophomore class proposed changing the Student Assembly meeting time to Friday afternoon, when fewer classes meet, in order to accommodate more students.
However, Student Assembly Treasurer, Chelsea Clouse said changing the time of student assembly could cause additional problems.
Clouse mentioned that all active Student Assembly members have re-routed their schedules in order to keep Tuesday nights free and moving the meeting to another time could make room for more confusion.
Another potential idea was to have the sophomore class Treasurer Eric Grady and sophomore class Secretary Tyler King sit in for the sophomore representatives who could not make the assembly meeting due to the 6:30 p.m Tuesday meeting time.
However, Student Trustee Jordan Posner refuted and asked, “What is the role of a representative if they cannot attend student assembly?”
Four representatives attend each meeting, along with the vice president of each class, with the exception of the senior class, which has 5 representatives, and each member votes on budget and funding requests, and constitution approvals.
If Grady and King were to sit in for Donnelly and Bradley, the two would not be able to vote because they are not of status to vote. “If you can’t vote then you would just be sitting there,” Posner said.
After a lengthy discussion, Student Assembly decided to table the discussion until the executive board could review each option in more detail.
This meeting marked the last Student Assembly meeting of the fall semester, so this controversy will be revisited in the spring 2012 semester.
In the discussion and action portion of the meeting, there were two funding requests.
The 7 Day Film Competition was awarded their requested budget of $2,600 to host an event for students and community members that would demonstrate film production skills.
For the competition, each contestant creates a 3 to 5 minute film short in 7 days and then presents their film at the Colonial in Keene.
Ultimate Frisbee was awarded a budget of $1,748 to attend a tournament in Georgia called “High Tide.”
Six hundred of their budget will go towards the tournament fee and the remainder will go towards travel costs, food expenses and lodging for approximately 20 team members.
Owl Nation was awarded a budget of $2,000 for supplies, printing, and travel expenses in order to amp up school spirit and game attendance for both home and away athletic games.
Two constitutions were approved during the discussion and action portion as well.
The Computer Science Club is a perspective club brought to assembly’s attention by Justin Westra. “I would like to create a more rich and fulfilling computer science community,” Webster said.
Due to a recent freshman class representative resigning, Student Assembly elected Desiree Stoken as the new freshman class rep.
Dylan Morrill was elected as a non-traditional class representative.
Jordan Cuddemi can be contacted at jcuddemi@keene-equinox.com.