The student senate convened for a meeting on Wednesday, approving the Judicial Council’s nominees for the Election Council and amending the bylaws for the Committee on the Constitution. The session began with an opening prayer, followed by a diversity workshop led by Ashley Avalos and Nneze Ekowa, senior fellows at the Multicultural Student Program and Services.
Throughout the workshop, several senators shared their personal experiences with racism in their own lives and shared how it impacted them personally. This group included vice president Sonia Lumley, who reflected on her struggles growing up as a mixed-race individual.
“One of my earliest memories where I noticed that I'm a mixed-race individual was when I was walking down a road with my mom,” she said. “My mom's black and lives by a retirement home, and a man had gotten out of his house and told us, ‘Get out of here.’ That was one of the first times I really realized my race and who I am.”
Tayo Awe, the senator from the Undergraduate Community at Fischer, also shared his experience on the subject, noting that most of what he encounters is not overt racism, but rather occasional off-hand comments and jokes — especially in large social settings and even among those close to him. He elaborated on how he approaches situations of this kind.
“Racism mostly happens when there's a large crowd of people, like at football games or tailgates. You might hear a comment and internally, you don't want to put yourself in a dangerous scenario … to step up and say something or intervene,” Awe said. “You don't want to put a target on your back. But it's also the case where you don’t want to just let it slide … If I ever had a friend or family member say something crazy, essentially, I’d tell them, ‘No, that’s not accurate,’ and I’d explain why.”
After the workshop, the senate moved into general orders, of which none were planned for the session. As a result, senate parliamentarian Sam Robinson requested the body move several items out of new business and into general orders. The first item would have pushed forward a vote on the Judicial Council’s nominees for the Elections Council, while a second moved judicial council laws governing the Constitutional Committee into the student senate bylaws in an effort to simplify the procedures presiding over the Committee.
“So right now, both the student senate bylaws and the judicial council bylaws govern the operations of the Committee on the Constitution, and they are almost textually identical,” Robinson said. “So all that I’m doing is taking the two-sentence editions that are in the judicial council bylaws and adding them to the Student Senate bylaws, because they’re much more successful there.”
The senate quickly approved a motion to move these first two items into general orders. The motion to approve nominees for the Elections Council was then easily approved, resulting in 11 new council members who, according to Judicial Council president Elijah Jones’ nomination letter, will “review all allegations of potential election misconduct and all potential violations of elections regulations” and “aid the Vice-President of Elections in his or her duties in conducting elections.” The second item, the motion to amend the Constitutional Committee’s bylaws, also passed without objection.
After passing these two items, the senate moved out of general orders, concluding its session with an announcement by Student Union Board executive director Danny Ward. He highlighted AcoustiCafé, which will run from 8:30–10:30 p.m. on Thursday at Library Lawn, and a celebration of National Coffee Day on Friday from 8:30–11 a.m. outside of O’Shaughnessy Hall.
Editor’s note: a previous version of this story misattributed Tayo Awe’s quote to Elijah Jones. The Observer apologizes for this error.
