Senator John Oyas uses his clicker to vote for a bill at a USG meeting on Oct. 7, 2014. (Photo by Alexis Macklin)
Undergraduate Student Governments from all four campuses will be joining together for a University-wide senate meeting on Nov. 15 to discuss bills and resolutions that will affect the entire University rather than just individual campuses.
The meeting was spearheaded by Tempe USG President Cassidy Possehl after the idea had been tossed around by the College of Council Presidents for the past four years.
"There had been talk about it between different councils of presidents for about four years but has never really been able to come to fruition," Possehl said. "I sort of took the lead on it this year and decided this is something that is really important to our University and really important to all of our students and something really worthwhile to get done."
The urgency to create a University-wide senate meeting came after the four USGs and the Graduate and Professional Student Association voted to endorse a mandatory $150-per-year athletic fee last fall. Tempe USG didn't hold an informational town hall about the bill introducing it to Tempe students until after the other governments had already passed it.
"I think the urgency for this meeting came from that, and that's why I made it really urgent on my agenda this year to get this done," Possehl said. "I wanted to make sure from now on we had a venue so if anything like the athletics fee comes up again that we're able to have it available."
The meeting will be held so senators from different campuses can discuss ideas and hear opinions from the source instead of voting without hearing everyone's opinion from each campus senate.
"What we are trying to do is give a venue and a space for university affairs, things that will really affect our University to be heard at a senate meeting so our legislators for each college from each campus can not only hear the legislation together but they can also hear all of the opinions and conversations from all of the senators rather than it being broken up by campus," Possehl said.
Tempe USG Senate President Will Smith said the student government has been looking at bills closely to determine if they are campus issues or University issues before discussions this year.
"This is why we've been so discriminatory about campus-specific versus University-wide issues this year is because we want to make sure the right issues are being heard in the right venues," he said.
The meeting should cover a lot of legislation that will be acting as resolutions that will ask for policy changes or broader issues for the University, Smith said.
"An example would be the Indigenous People's Day resolution, which has been crafted by the coalition and one of our senators here on the Tempe campus," he said.
The bill to change Columbus Day to Indigenous People's Day was originally going to be presented at the Tempe USG meeting on Oct. 7, but due to any change in the holiday, it would require USGs from all campuses to pass.
USG Downtown President Frank Smith III said coalitions and students can contact anyone in student government if they have any issues they think should be addressed and possibly be written into a bill or resolution.
"This is a great way to see how everyone feels about an issue and see where everyone is coming from on one topic," he said.
One resolution USGD will be presenting will be a Pac-12 initiative against sexual violence, which will be a resolution for all Pac-12 schools to join into the initiative as a collective body, Smith said.
"We are trying to get all Pac-12 schools signed up and we are putting that on the agenda to discuss," he said.
This will be the first meeting of its kind in recent memory and many pieces of legislation are expected to be presented during the meeting.
"I understand this has never been accomplished so I'm interested in seeing how it goes," Smith said.
Reach the reporter at jshanco2@asu.edu or follow on Twitter @joey_hancock
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