Loyola University • New Orleans • Volume 94 • Issue 21 • March 11, 2016
THE MAROON FOR A GREATER LOYOLA
Harry Connick, Jr. named commencement speaker for class of 2016 By Colleen Dulle mcdulle@loyno.edu @ColleenDulle
Courtesy of Loyola University
Harry Connick, Jr., musician and entertainer, will speak at Loyola’s commencement ceremony this year, the university announced in a press release March 7. Connick, who attended Loyola for a semester, will receive an honorary doctorate of music degree at the ceremony Saturday, May 21 at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. “It’s a great honor for me—one that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about,” Connick told The Maroon in an email. Connick said that his relationship with the university began early, and that his favorite memory of Loyola was taking piano lessons
here in his childhood. “Loyola has always been a part of my life,” Connick said. “I didn’t spend much time at Loyola—barely one semester—but I fondly remember my time there.” In his campus email announcing Connick’s appearance, the Rev. Kevin Wildes, S.J., university president, said he sees Connick as a qualified and exciting speaker. “Given Harry’s fascinating personal story and astounding international career, we know that our students welcome his advice and insights as they ‘go forth and set the world on fire,'” Wildes said in the email. Graduating seniors may hear Connick echo this St. Ignatius Loyola quote, a graduation favorite, in his commencement address, as the singer was educated by Jesuits both at Jesuit High School and Loyola. Connick cited the Jesuits as a great personal and philanthropic influence. “The Jesuits are strong believers in charity and helping others. They work hard to communicate this to their students. I was lucky to have studied with many great teachers at Jesuit and Loyola,” Connick said. Though Connick has expressed his excitement about coming to Loyola, students have had
mixed reactions. Adam Gerber, music industry studies senior, believes the university should be worried about other issues than its commencement speaker. “I just think it’s hard to get excited about a commencement speaker while the school is facing so many challenges,” Gerber said. “The whole thing seems like window dressing, trying to spruce up deeper structural flaws with window dressing.” Others, like Francesca Vaccaro, chemistry senior, are excited for Connick to speak, but hope to ensure diversity in Loyola’s choice of speaker. “My mom is excited; my sister is excited. Honestly, they may be a bit more excited than me, but it is exciting to have someone who is wellknown. I just wish that in the future, they would have a woman speaker, since it seems to have been a while,” Vaccaro said. Loyola has not had a female commencement speaker since 2008. Despite these concerns, Connick said he doesn’t take his position at commencement lightly. “Please know how excited I am to be able to speak to the 2016 graduating class. I take the responsibility seriously and I’m absolutely thrilled to have been invited,” Connick said.
SGA is trying to eliminate college presidents unconstitutionally By Nick Reimann nsreiman@loyno.edu @nicksreimann
For the second time in four years, Loyola’s Student Government Association is attempting to reduce the amount of seats in the SGA Senate without constitutional authority. Students will be allowed to run for the positions of president, vice president, senator at-large and senator by college, but there is no option to run for the position of college president. The SGA by-laws describe the role of the college president to be a sitting member of the SGA Senate that “represent the interests, voices and needs of the students within their college to their respective dean.” Maria Calzada, who has served as dean of the College of Humanities and Natural Sciences since 2013, and served as the college’s interim dean from 2011 to 2013, said she has never had any interaction with an SGA college president. “I learned about the position this week from the Maroon,” Calzada
said. She also said she is not aware of any students that are interested in taking the position. The position of college president is explicitly stated as part of the SGA Senate in Article 6, Section 6.02, Subsection III of the SGA Constitution, which states that there will be representation in the Senate by “one (1) College President from each of the colleges within Loyola University New Orleans excluding the College of Law.” There is currently a constitutional amendment on the ballot that, if passed by Loyola’s student body, would eliminate the college president position. But in the meantime, the position still constitutionally exists, and students cannot run for it. This isn’t the first time that SGA has attempted to eliminate seats without the approval of the student body. In 2013, SGA attempted to cut the number of representatives by more than half by drafting a new constitution during a closed-door meeting. They also did not include several constitutionally granted positions
on the ballot that year, including college presidents. After the ensuing controversy, many of the proposed constitutional changes failed to pass the student body, saving the college president position for the time. Bud Sheppard, current SGA Chief Justice who approved this year’s election code, believes that leaving the position off of this year’s ballot is a way of eliminating a role that is seen as unnecessary. “It was just one position for each college in the Senate,” Sheppard said. “The president’s duty was to meet with that college’s dean and also, I guess, do the SGA senator job as well. It was just like a title, it wasn’t anything big. It’s not like the senators can’t just reach out to the deans as well, and so it just sort of seemed like extra blow to the system that wasn’t really needed.” Allison Rogers, former SGA director of communication and 2015 SGA presidential candidate, agreed that the college president position wasn’t being utilized very well. But she believes that this is due to serious institutional dysfunction within
the SGA. “Eliminating the college president position is only treating the symptoms, not the root cause,” Rogers said. “The real solution to the problems in senate would be to address the actual problem: student apathy. Why don't students want to run for senate and why can't we seem to fill all of the positions? It's not that we have a student body full of unmotivated and unconcerned students - we routinely see students expressing their concerns outside of SGA whether it be through a petition to replace Father Wildes or a Facebook group to discuss unstable Wi-Fi. The issue, then, seems to be that students do not see SGA as the body that will address their concerns. And why would they? SGA does not pass initiatives that address common complaints on campus, SGA does not routinely meet with administrators to discuss upper level concerns and SGA does not seem to play an active role in even the lives of those who are members of the organization; a ten minute senate meeting every week doesn't count.”
LOYOLAMAROON.COM • FB.COM/THELOYOLAMAROON • @LOYOLA_MAROON
Along with the four college president positions, the SGA Senate is also composed of senators at-large, elected by the entire student body, and senators by college, which are only voted on by students in their respective college. Article 6, Section 6.2, Subsection II of the SGA Constitution defines representation by senators at-large as being “proportional to one (1) senator-at-large, rounded to the nearest whole number, per eight hundred (800) students of the total spring enrollment of the university, excluding students enrolled in the College of Law,." It defines representation from senators by college as being “proportional to one (1) Senator, rounded to the nearest whole number, per two hundred (200) students of the total spring enrollment in that college.” Using enrollment data obtained from Loyola’s Office of Institutional Research, there should be three senators at-large representing the entire student body.
See PRESIDENTS, page 3