Summer makes almost every student group dormant since everyone is back home or busy with summer classes. That’s the case for most organizations, unless you’re the ASUO.
The first summer Senate meeting happened on Thursday and a total of six ASUO members were present (including the summer Senate president and vice president.) The miniscule number of senators present along with the restrictions that are put on the ASUO during the summer could make anyone wonder as to what the ASUO Senate is even able to accomplish during the three-month period.
The relative lack of personnel means the Senate has to operate with one of its hands tied behind its back.
“We can’t do confirmations, we can’t do resolutions and we have a limit of $5,000 for special requests,” said ASUO Sen. Matthew Miyamoto.
That’s looking at summer Senate through the perspective of having the same motivations and goals as the Senate during the school year. Summer Senate has its own separate mechanism, which has a whole different set of goals.
“Summer Senate isn’t as intense as during the year, but we do a lot of things internally,” said ASUO Sen. Taylor Allison, who is also serving as the summer Senate vice president. “Even with the limit, we still do special requests, and a lot of what we also do is look at rule changes things that we can do to make senate more affective.”
Allison says that one of the objectives for summer Senate is to look at the previous school year, and see what things can be changed for the better come next year. Those changes come in the form of Senators creating a document that shows suggestions to changing some rules that will help Senate run smoothly.
“’The rules’ pretty much means anything in the constitution, something that we would like to put on the ballot, or whatever’s Senate-related,” Miyamoto said. “Essentially, it’s all encompassing.”
There’s no maximum limit or minimum to the rule changes Senate may present to rules committee. Miyamoto said that last summer’s rule document came out to be 26 pages.
The other primary way summer Senate looks to make Senate better in the future is by making the ASUO an active part in incoming freshmen experience. According to Allison, the ASUO is looking to reach out to new students so that they can be familiar with the organization come fall term, something Allison wish happened when she was a freshman at the UO.
“I don’t remember the ASUO being a big presence during July’s introduction when I was an incoming freshman,” Allison said. “There the ones that’ll be running ASUO in just a few short years, so it’s beyond important that they get involved or are at least familiar with who we are.”