Ohio University Student Senate received a presentation from OU President Duane Nellis at its first meeting of the year Wednesday night.
The president, whose term at OU officially began June 12, welcomed the new senate body and spoke about his hope for shared governance and a line of communication between senate and the President’s Office.
“We care deeply about perspectives from you,” Nellis said. “I need you all to provide your voices to me in a constructive way to help build a stronger institution.”
Three resolutions proposed where to spend the $10,000 leftover from the rollback of the Bobcat Readership Program, which was voted on by last year’s senate.
One resolution gave the entire $10,000 to Senate Appropriations Commission. Another split the funds equally between Senate Appropriations Commission and two senate-mandated programs, Take Back the Night and Pride Week, which would give the two events $2,500 each. The third split the money between the two events and excluded Senate Appropriations Commission.
Senate voted 32 to 8 for the second resolution, allocating the funds equally to Senate Appropriations Commission and between the two events.
Senate Appropriations Commission will receive $5,000 and Take Back the Night and Pride Week will both receive $2,500.
The other three resolutions passed unanimously. The body voted to group the three resolutions together and to bypass a debate, since they concerned “procedural matters,” Lama said.
Because the resolutions passed, senate will continue to hold weekly meetings at 7:15 p.m. and use Times New Roman 12-pt. font in its legislation.
Senate will also continue to follow Robert’s Rules of Order, which the resolution calls “the most well organized” as well as the most commonly used framework of parliamentary procedure.
“Students of Ohio University deserve a Parliamentary Procedure which is easy for them to participate in and useful to them outside of the scope of Student Senate,” the resolution said.
This year, senate will periodically receive presentations from PR Director Sara Defibaugh.
Defibaugh displayed the senate’s Twitter account’s statistics.
“Everyone is finally able to see what’s happening,” Defibaugh said in a previous interview with The Post. “It’s exciting for the media team to finally be able to begin promoting. We worked hard over the summer to get the ball rolling.”
Defibaugh added that senate will release their website in a few weeks.
In a closing report, Dean of Students Jenny Hall-Jones praised senate for working over the summer.
“It’s not often that people have done work over summer that we are reporting on,” Hall-Jones said. “It’s impressive, when technically today is your first meeting. Great job.”
