SGA January 25, 2010

Roll Call -7:59 PM

Senators Present: Beovich, Guy, Perry, Reid, Gessner, Kuyk, Langan, McCants, Macon, Mahan, Miner, Sanders, Smith, Stewart, Fowler, Jones, King, Tanner, Johnson, Schneider, Sells, Carlson, Youngblood, Broach, Riner, Ramsey, Richardson, Thomas, and Hall

Senators Absent: Pearson, Hillard, Kapadia

Officers Present: Gardner, Proctor, Baldwin, Bettis, Al-Greene, and Pittman

Officers Absent: N/A

APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES

Sponsor: Senator Guy

Approved by Acclimation

Officer Reports

President Gardner –I hope everyone enjoyed their MLK Day and weekend of events. Myself and Dean Mitchell will be going to a Higher Education lunch-in Wednesday. So that will be good. Also, I am going to go ahead and announce that two positions will be filled for the Senate Nursing seats. The first one is Alex LeBron, she is a Junior (stands up and greets senate). The next one that will be filling the other position, is Colman Wolf (stands up and greets senate). He is currently the Athletic Development Chair, so many of ya’ll have seen him around. Also, I am going to give a little warning on SGA elections coming up. I’m going to tell you all what the dates are for all that because I am sure some of you will be wanting to re-run. The SGA applications will be going out March 22^nd, which is the first Monday back from Spring Break and that will be at 8 AM and the applications will be due the next Monday, the 29^th of March. And there will be a brief meeting with Colin about the rules will be discussed about campaigns. That should last no more than thirty minutes at 5:15 on 29^th. And just a reminder, once you turn in your application that is what you are running for. Once that meeting is over, campaigning will start the 29^th and will go till the end of officer elections. If you are running for an officer position – President, Vice President, there will be an officer forum that Thursday in April at 6 PM, so expect that. I don’t know what room yet, so that will be pending. Ballots will go out the 5^th, which is a Monday at 8 AM and it will go through the night and end at 3 PM. That will give us some time for people getting the ballots. And if there are any run-offs, run-offs will begin Monday the 12^th at 8AM till Wednesday, the 14^th at 3PM. Keep that in mind and you can start spreading the word. I’ll be putting that schedule up in the office and let everyone know about that. That’s all I have.

Vice President Proctor –Well, normally what we do for the elections committee for that, we will get a senior from the senator someone who is not running again to volunteer to serve as the elections chair and you will get office hours for it and that’s what we have always done in the past, so please be thinking about that if you know you aren’t going to run again and you want to help Glen. What you will do is that you will assist him with the ballot and you will check the different rules and regulations and help him enforce those on campus as needed. So please be thinking about that. And, remember that our next two meetings are our budget meetings. For both of those they count as two absences and you have to come in dress clothes for both meetings. So that means no jeans and T-shirts. Khakis and Polo is fine or a button up. You don’t have to be in a tie, but if you wear that, that is fine with me. So if you know you are going to have to miss another meeting later in the semester due to class or something, please do not miss a budget meeting, because you will not be allowed to miss anymore. That is all that I have for my report and if you have any questions or ideas about projects, please bring those to myself or Michael so we can meet with you to get that set aside in the budget. Baldwin is feeling a little under the weather, so he will not be giving a report.

Treasurer Baldwin – N/A

Attorney General Bettis – In my report I have been working on the Higher Education rally. The rally begins on 2 on Saturday and to get students concerns about how they feel about tuition increases. And how they feel on the State’s budgets on the education funds. This will be an event that will lead up to the March 4^th Higher Education Rally in Montgomery. SO what we what we really need to do with SGA is to get some people to sign up to go. We are going to need a lot of support, so we need participation from the students so that we can make an impact for our school and show our support, so we can convey to the legislator how we feel about tuition increases.

Chief Justice Al-Greene – Reinforces Proctor about elections. I wanted to briefly add to what President Gardner said. Elections are coming up, and if you are interested in a office you should come up and see what they do on the job, details.

Vice President Proctor- Before Student at Large Pittman makes her report let me make a side note. On February the 8^th, Ashley has driving school in Montgomery. That is a budget meeting and because she is considered an Officer, but is listed on the Senate Staff, she will need to be a approved following that meeting. And she wanted to give you all a heads about that. Please just note that.

Student at Large Pittman – This past week I have spoke with Robyn and Nick about the IPC Dinner. We just wanted to know if the SGA had any ideas what they wanted to convey to the organization. They should speak to me and that should be at the end of February that will have that. So if any of ya’ll have any ideas you should come meet up with me.

Committee Reports

Senator Guy (Senator Pro Tem) – Dean Mitchell has done a little bit of research for me and they have been talking about redoing the system already. So this is something we can really get our foot in the door with and help out. They looked at software that is cost between 18 and 40 thousand dollars for purchase. That is a onetime fee. They will start mailing out parking permits. They talked about getting a third party to do that would be about 10 thousand dollars. Which isn’t that bad considering all the students that we have at South. So that’s all I have in my report. If ya’ll want me to find out any information on that just Facebook me and ask me and I will keep in contact with Dean Mitchell about that. Also, don’t forget about the Pre -budget meeting, this Wednesday at 5:30. We will be going over all the packets for appropriations. So it is really important for you to be there.

Vice President Proctor – Are there any questions about that? (Silence). Okay, I have had a few concerns that have been brought up to Treasure Baldwin about the way we wanna handle to budget meeting. So I would like to explain the process while we are on that. Two years ago the way they handled appropriations, the Senators meet and addressed the packets before the budget meeting. If there was any discrepancy, we called them in that meeting and we handled anything that needed to be handled and any questions that needed to be answered. So in our meeting we have four motions. Three of them are to approve each of the budgets, because you have to approve the budget you are spending and there was just one mask approval of appropriations. We always do that in the summer. We are doing the same amount of work, just on a different night. So do any of you have any questions or concerns with us doing that? What we wanna do is spare all the group members who have to come discuss things for four hours when we can do that on our own time and get some office hours for it. I mean were there some concerns? Because Treasurer Baldwin had some brought up to him. If you don’t want to voice them now, you can come up and talk to me on Wednesday and if you are not here on Wednesday night I will be meeting with you before the budget meeting and you still have to sign off on the packet.

Senator Gessner – The people

Treasurer Baldwin – If there are any concern, will call them let them talk to us on Wednesday.

Senator Sells –I want to expand on what Senator Gessner said. If we do have a problem with a packet, are we going to just put them on speaker phone?

Vice President Proctor – We don’t have to put them on speaker phone. What we are going to do if there is issues with certain groups, they won’t be put in the bulk appropriations, we will separately discuss those groups if there are major issues. And what we wanted to do is talk about all out of the issues you all had last time. And if you will, please, on the meeting Wednesday will go over it a lot smoother. Because I have the lay down and skim through what all the requirements are for the appropriations and what a co- sponsorship is. Because a lot of you aren’t clear on that at last meeting and the was a cause for a lot of the questions. So if there are discrepancies, in the meeting Wednesday we will leave that group out of the bulk appropriations. We will separately discuss that group for appropriations. But, I don’t foresee being a whole lot of this. Did I answer your question Senator Sells?

Senator Sells – Pretty much. It was just going with Senator Gessner that it is very important to have representatives there because sometimes there are things that just come up. (Stated Example). There was a quick fix answer, that wasn’t that big of a deal. It just takes one point blank question to clear it up. So it seems to me, prudent, to have the representation be there while we are discussing the appropriations.

Senator Ramsey – I feel like we are moving toward the Alabama’s and Florida’s Sunshine Laws.

Vice President Proctor – Explain so everyone is this room will understand what you are talking about.

Senator Ramsey – They made this law to get rid of black market and under handed trading.

Vice President Proctor – This is why everything will be on the agenda.

Senator Sells – I think what Senator Ramsey is trying to say is that he feels like this is an over opposing government.

Senator Guy- The point of the pre-budget meeting is not for any of the organizations that we have any questions about. If we have any question, whether 211 dollars or whether it is 5 dollars, that is something separate that we will discuss in the meeting where there will be a representative. The ones that need no discussion are those we will bulk together so we don’t keep all those people in there for four hours unnecessarily. All I am saying is that those who have no questions, that aren’t anything out of the ordinary and have everything they are suppose to have, those are the ones that we are going to bulk. If we have any questions at all, we are going to vote on those ones and those will be the ones that representatives will be at the meetings.

Vice President Proctor – Is that clear? All the representatives are still coming. So if you have a question you can ask it at the meeting.

Senator Guy - The pre -budget meeting is just to get the appropriations ready and get all the people who have all their stuff together and have everything right, we don’t want to punish them and make them sit here for four hours, while we discuss everyone in front of them if they did everything right.

Senator Perry – Senator Perry explains that she has been checking into banning the vector for harassing students all though they have not been seen on campus for a couple months.

Vice President Proctor – Establishes that the Vectors are salespersons that try to attract students to buy unfairly priced knives sets.

Special Reports

Dean Mitchell – Greets the senate and asks how many of the SGA members were on their student council in high school (many raise their hand) He goes to explain the at 5^th and 6^th grade student council reps are coming to tour the SGA office and that in between the hours of 10-11:30AM next . He would like to have some of the members be present at that time to act as host and hostesses. It would count as office hours.

Julie Magee–Julie, an alumni of South Alabama, came to speak to see if any SGA members would be interested in helping out in her political campaign to promote Tim James for Governor. She has a sign up for anyone who wants to help and points out that it is a good experience for a resume. Julie came with bumper stickers and pins if anyone was interested.

Old Business

Chief Justice Al-Greene – Al-Green mentions the Gumbo Chili Cook Off coming up on March 6^th and suggests making or sponsoring a time. He points out that Senator Perry has been known to have a good chili recipe

Student Forum

N/A

Announcements:

Senator Youngblood – Thirsty Thursday at Buffalo Wild Wings.

Vice President Proctor- Proctor says this is a good way to meet some other people on SGA and it is not necessary to drink alcohol to go.

Senator Jones – 2 Weeks till spirit week; Rep meeting Thursday at 6 and 8; also if you want to help I am assigning jobs

Senator Guy – All of that counts as office hours is you sign up

Vice President Proctor – Ms. Jaguar applications are due on Friday

Chief Justice Al-Greene – Who are the judges for Spirit Week?

Vice President Proctor – That is yet to be decided.

Dean Mitchell – Just reminder to stop by on Friday morning from 10 -11:30 stop by.

Movement to Close the Meeting

Sponsor: Senator Sells

Approved by Acclimation (8:29 PM)