Photo courtesy of AS Communications
By Jack Taylor
The clock is ticking for the Associated Students Board of Directors to decide how to amend the AS WWU Constitution.
With proposed changes ranging from detailing the differences between the AS Board and AS Student Senate, board members must come up with resolutions before spring elections occur.
The most debated issue of the April 5 meeting was how to establish the AS Student Services Council.
Despite still being a draft, Nate Jo and Natasha Hessami, AS VP for business and operations and AS VP for governmental affairs respectively, both laid out their plan for how the AS student senate council will function and what its role will be in students’ lives.
Hessami described the changes they are hoping to make with the council during the meeting.
“The purpose of the Student Services Council is to serve as the primary operating authority on student services and programs,” Hessami said. “That’s the budgets of the Outback and the Outreach Center, and position details and offices.”
Much of the conversation presided over how to instill the council, and what the council will look like.
“The Student Services Council needs to happen now,” Jo said. “As I become more familiar with this position and the nature of the restructure, it’s become increasingly clear to me that there are lot of questions to be answered, and with no VP of business and operations being elected, the SSC needs to come into existence now.”
However, despite universal agreement that the council should exist, members of the board held different views over whether students will vote for members of the proposed council or if it will be hired positions. Jo had a firm take on what he believed should be done.
“This is not a third branch of government,” Jo said. “It has no direct bearing on students’ day-to-day lives in that they will never vote for a member of the Student Services Council unless in the future, the students decide to create it as a third branch.”
Jo stressed the importance of working the AS student services council into the constitution rather than forming a subcommittee due to not wanting the council reporting to either the AS board or AS student senate. This way, he said, the two entities have equal power.
Levi Eckman, the AS VP for academic affairs, expressed concern over not allowing students the ability to vote over who gets to preside on the council as well as the general purpose of the council.
Eckman who could not make the meeting in person, was phoned in to overhear the meeting and express his opinions.
“It takes a village and the type of situation that Student Services Council is, is quite the undertaking,” Eckman said. “And even today, I don’t even understand the functionality of Student Services Council.”
Hessami hopes that the creation of the AS student services council will allow the AS board and the AS student senate more time to focus on their projects rather than day to day tasks.
Jo also explained how that is the main reason why the AS student services council will be made.
“With the creation of the Student Services Council, and the goal of the restructure is to remove day to day operations from both the Executive Board and the Student Senate, so that those bodies can focus on academic shared governance, university governance and lobbying efforts,” Jo said.
The AS board disputed over who will chair the council and if the positions on the council will be hired positions or elected positions.
The AS board will have until the spring elections, which is the week of April 29, to come up with a draft and have it pass through in order to have it ready for a vote by the students.
More information on the AS board can be found on their website.