Senate Recap: Speaker discusses religious Senate seats, positions ratified

Discussion about Religious Organizations in Senate

During his last day, Speaker of the Senate Jeff Sznapstajler brought up the discussion of religious seats in Senate, a conversation that started when both MSUM and Hillel presented bills for positions of their own in Student Government Senate.

The consensus among the senators was that a round table should be set up with the heads of all of the religious organizations. Then, either the speaker of the Senate or someone else would be assigned to specifically voice the concerns of the leaders to the Senate during meetings.

Sznapstajler believed that it would be a “good use of the speaker’s time to meet with the heads of all these organizations.”

Although the discussion was about religious organizations, Senator Candice Johnson brought up the issue of how students perceive Senate. Allie Hussey, chief justice of the student Supreme Court, reminded senators that their role is to represent their constituents.

“The senators should consider the needs of all their constituents, which may include students with religious needs. Whether it may be a Jewish student in the School of Business or a Muslim student who is a freshman, those students do have a senator to voice their concerns to,” Hussey said.

Aaron Gluck, parliamentarian to Senate, said having senators be more involved with their constituencies would allow them to speak for the students of a bill. Gluck said it would alleviate the frustration he witnessed when the students who presented the religious seat bills then had to wait outside the Senate Room during the deliberation process.

Positions Ratified

  • The end of the semester brings new appointments to executive positions on Elections Commission, Category 5 and the Supreme Court.
  • For the Elections Commission, the new chairperson is Claudia Nunes and the new vice chairperson is Vishal Lakshmanan.
  • Category 5 elected Kierin Mukerjee as the new chairperson and Adam Schmidt as the new vice chairperson.

Finally, Devin Fitzgerald was selected as the new Supreme Court chief justice.