By Brielle Bryan
News Editor
Student Government passed two bills requiring student organizations to go through the Office of Student Involvement when making changes to their constitutions and registering themselves as recognized organizations during its weekly meeting on Jan 31.
Brooke Chlebowski, SG’s vice president of governmental affairs and a junior special education and iSTEM double major, was asked by the Office of Student Involvement to write bills B-S2018-01 and B-S2018-02.
B-S2018-01 requires student organizations to review any changes made to their constitutions with a staff member from the Office of Student Involvement as the final step before any changes are approved.
“Besides going through Student Government, they would also have to go through the Office of Student Involvement, which is creating a check to that system,” Chlebowski said. “God forbid any organization wants to change something in their constitution that doesn’t abide by the Student Code of Conduct.”
B-S2018-02 states that students have up to three weeks after a semester begins to contact the coordinator of student organizations in the Office of Student Involvement to register their club as a recognized student organization. Failure to do so would halt access to privileges as a recognized organization.
If a club is not registered, it will lose access to privileges on Lion’s Gate and will be unable to register for events, according to Chlebowski. If a club does not register its events on Lion’s Gate, it cannot receive funding for its events.
After both bills were passed, Chris Blakeley, SG’s executive president and a junior civil engineering major, brought up an item of old business.
Last semester, Blakeley was approached by a member of Georgetown University’s student government. Blakeley was told that the university was putting together a letter proposing the school’s stance on changes to Title IX policies. Title IX helps students seeking help regarding sexual violence, domestic violence and stalking. Blakeley and 200 other student government presidents signed this letter. Niki Taneja, SG’s vice president of advancement and a junior finance major, announced to members of SG that she would be meeting with College Spokesperson Dave Muha to talk about different issues students have been encountering with the College’s website.
“Information isn’t updated from semester to semester,” said Shrish Jawadiwar, SG’s parliamentarian and a freshman political science major. Jawadiwar said that when he looked up information on music auditions, the College’s website shows audition information that has been irrelevant since August 2017.
Other members of SG said that there were more problems with accessibility to certain links on the College’s website, and navigation between different web pages could be difficult at times.
One member of SG said that on the College’s Office of Leadership page, links to resources such as the National Association for Student Personnel Administrators took him to a different site that said the web page did not exist.
Blakeley announced that the Dancers of NJ and the Japanese Student Organization will be attending next week’s meeting, as well as Mark Forest, director of CAPS and the Interim Assistant Vice President for Health and Wellness within Student Affairs at the College. He also mentioned that SG would be voting on B-S2018-04, which is a bill that would define the responsibilities of the speaker of the general assembly.
The bill states that the speaker of general assembly’s term will be one entire academic year from when they are elected, according to Brittany Cruz, SG’s speaker of the general assembly and a junior communication studies major.
SG also said that it is trying to bring back student organization awards as a way to recognize outstanding clubs for their achievements.
