The AS Review logo
By PJ Heusted
The Associated Students Board of Directors met on Friday, Oct. 2 for their second meeting of the 2020-21 academic year. VP for Governmental Affairs Nicole Ballard was absent from the meeting.
Associated Students Senate Pro-tempore Hours Increase
Senate Pro-tempore Sargun Handa proposed an increase to the hours that her position is allowed to work each week given the current workload involved in preparing for fall elections. She requested an increase from 19 hours per week to 25 hours per week. Handa pointed out that she is already working into the 20 or more hour per week range and previously met with budget office employees and AS professional staff to see if this change would be possible and received positive feedback.
AS Board Program Coordinator Annie Byers pointed out that strict state regulations exist regarding the ability to allow student employees to work more than 19 hours per week and that only certain positions are allowed to work above this limit.
The board and Byers agreed that more discussion and research would be necessary in order to understand if a change like this would be possible.
Changes to AS Election Code Regarding AS Student Senate Elections
Handa brought up three potential changes to the AS Election Code: shortening the voting period for senate elections, decreasing the signature requirements for initiative petitions and moving the senate elections to spring quarter.
Handa suggested that the voting period be changed from two weeks to one week given that she felt that the period length does not impact voter turnout citing this year’s shortened application period that resulted in more students running for at-large positions than last year.
She also suggested that the signature requirements for initiative petitions be lowered from 1.5% of the student body’s signatures, but states that the Elections Advisory Committee is unsure what they recommend for a new requirement. Handa pointed out that at the time of the meeting students would have less than seven days to get the 240 required signatures and that the initiative petition form had yet to be put up on the Western Involvement Network. At the time of publication, the AS Review was unable to find the form posted publicly to WIN.
Handa also built upon previous discussion about the possibility of moving senate elections to the spring to allow for senators to utilize all of fall quarter to work in their roles. She did comment on the downsides of this move in that it excludes graduate, first year and transfer students.
The board made plans to continue discussion and potentially voting on the matter at their next meeting on Friday, Oct. 9.