AS Executive Board update graphic PJ Heusted // AS Review
By PJ Heusted
The Associated Students Executive Board met on Friday, Feb. 19 for their seventeenth meeting of the 2020-21 academic year.
Black Student Organization Demand Updates
VP for Diversity Ranulfo Molina shared that the Black Student Coalition Development Specialist hiring committee moved forward in hiring three students.
Senate Pro-tempore Job Description
Senate Pro-tempore Sargun Handa shared a list of all of the committees included as being the responsibility of the senate pro-tempore in the job description. Handa sorted the list to mark which committees are currently active and inactive in an effort to help revise the job description with the most accurate and up-to-date list of responsibilities.
Handa said she is still working on the updates and will bring the document back at next week’s meeting for further review.
Honors College Proposal
Handa presented a document with the pros and cons of the current proposal for the creation of an Honors College at Western.
Handa said that this is an issue the AS Student Senate will be moving forward in addressing but wanted to present the information to the board to provide them with updates about their progress and for the sake of transparency.
AS Constitution Editing Timeline
VP for Governmental Affairs Nicole Ballard shared concerns about the current plan to revise the AS Constitution before spring elections in regards to the scope of the project and the timeline originally discussed. Ballard said that she felt that they were asking too much of themselves with not enough time to fully update and revise the constitution with adequate feedback.
AS President Abdul Malik Ford agreed with Ballard and said that he felt that it may be a better use of time to create documents with thorough advice and guidance for next year’s board and senate to make changes instead of trying to rush through the editing process this year.
Adjustments to Meetings
The board acknowledged that their meetings tend to take the full time allotted and considered adding another, shorter weekly or biweekly meeting to provide themselves with more time for discussion items and topics that they feel have been overlooked due to time constraints.
Everyone on the board spoke in favor of adding an additional meeting time, but there was not enough time during the meeting to discuss the logistics of when these meetings will be held and how they will be structured.