Amendment rejected for first time this year during last SGA Senate

“If you were to ask most students at this school to say anything about student government, they probably wouldn’t be able to tell you a lot,” Haynicz said. “It is confusing that they would be making decisions on the governing documents.”

Junior Marcus Rand, SGA’s sergeant-at-arms, agreed with Haynicz and said putting the constitution in the student body’s hands was a “bad precedent to set.” Rand also said this amendment poses the risk of giving the student body “voter’s fatigue” when there’s already a low turnout for schoolwide elections.

Butters and senior Student Body President Shawdee Bakhtiari argued SGA should include the student body in its proceedings, but it wasn’t enough to sway the Senate’s opinion.

Butters’ second amendment would’ve changed the current 14 academic college senator limit — which was proposed by sophomore Academic Affairs Chair Zachary Fleming and approved by the SGA on Feb. 23 — to 50 total across all seven academic colleges.

The amendment would also allow all academic college senators, graduate senators and class council members to participate in the election of the next Speaker to the SGA Senate.

Butters said the goal of the SGA is to “represent, serve and inform,” which she feels isn’t being fulfilled by the low limitation number for academic college senators — w hich could be counteracted by increasing the maximum number of academic college senators to 50.

Sophomore SGA Senator Lexi Alston, said the 14-senator limit in Fleming’s original amendment “made the most sense” because students in each academic college knew who their two representatives were and would feel comfortable approaching them.

Alston also added the 14 seat limitation increases competition in elections, which she compared to the real U.S. Senate, which has two Senators per state.

“Fifty is an ideal number, but unfortunately right now there is not enough interest. That is the baseline of the issue,” sophomore Representative Brielle Lacroix said. “I think having two people per college is what we need for what the current student body is.”

Bakhtiari, who supported the amendment, told the Senate they’ll “never be able to grow” if they keep stopping themselves because of lack of a student body interest.

Butters called for a line-item vote to decide the amendment’s fate. This allowed the Senate to vote on specific parts of the amendment instead of all of it at once

Voting was divided into two parts, one for the 50-limit academic college senators and the other for allowing academic college senators, graduate senators and class council members to participate in the election of the Speaker to the SGA Senate.

Haynicz motioned for a roll-call vote to determine the approval of changing the senator limit. Twelve senators voted against the proposal, shooting it down. Eleven senators were in favor of the amendment and 11 senators abstained from voting. The proposal for participation in the election of the Speaker to the SGA Senate failed due to two-thirds of the Senate failing to approve.

CONTACT Ashlee Thompson at thomp6ab@dukes.jmu.edu. For more coverage of JMU and Harrisonburg news, follow the news desk on Twitter @BreezeNewsJMU.