During the Senate meeting held on February 19, 2009, a very unimportant issue took up the most meeting time – that of Recommendation 6. Recommendation 6 was introduced to the Senate by Senators John Kristan, Mike Parreno, Liz Judy and Ellie Hastings. It reads, “Let it be recommended that the Office of the Provost begin to encourage professors to accept double-sided printed papers.” Aside from its silliness, which I will get to later, this recommendation that doesn’t really do anything has taken up so much of the Senate’s time compared to issues that matter so much more.

At the same meeting, the Senate passed an important election reform amendment that allows those students running for office to contact constituents with their consent. It reads, “Let … the MUSG Election Rules be amended to state: ‘The following activities are prohibited… Solicitation of votes by direct or indirect mailings (electronic or otherwise) or phone calls of any kind, unless the recipients individually and expressly request to receive such solicitations.”

This legislation, introduced by Senators Bill Doerrer and Tip McGuire, profoundly impacts the way campaigns will be run in the future.

It only took about five minutes for the Senators to make an amendment to the MUSG constitution, but it took them 22 minutes to determine whether or not to make a recommendation to the Provost.

Let me give you a brief history of this recommendation. During the Senate meeting held on Feb. 5, Senators Kristan, Parreno, Judy and Hastings introduced a recommendation that asked for the defaults on Printwise printers to be changed from single-sided to double-sided. The rationale for this switch was that it would save both the university and students money. Currently, printing two pages costs 14 cents whereas printing one sheet double-sided costs 10 cents for students.
During questioning, many Senators were concerned that the committee introducing the recommendation didn’t speak with faculty to see if double-sided documents would be accepted in class. It was also pointed out that it is a fairly easy process to switch from single-sided to double-sided on the print options menu, therefore making this recommendation unnecessary.
Finally, the dissent noted that it would be in bad to taste to tell the faculty what to do should an amendment to the recommendation be made about the acceptance of double-sided documents. After a painfully long discussion, it was suggested that it be tabled for two weeks.

Recommendation 6, which was discussed on Feb. 19, was a version of the original recommendation. At 8:02 p.m. CST , (yes, this time I decided to time how much of my time they found acceptable to waste) questioning opened for the new recommendation and several of the same sentiments were raised on the part of the dissent. The faculty again had not been consulted, nor had the students.

When asked if he spoke to any constituents about the proposed recommendation, Senator Kristan answered, “I haven’t talked to any constituents, but we were elected to make decisions.”
Really?

Come on, Senator, you were elected to represent students. How are you to do that if you don’t know where they stand on issues?
During questioning, it also came out that the Renewal Task Force was working on something similar, making the passing of this recommendation basically pointless. Kristan noted that they would like to hear how the students feel. However, he shouldn’t talk about students’ feelings because he admitted to not actually knowing them.
Another new concern was directed towards the persuasive power of the Provost. Senators wanted to know if all professors would have to adopt the practice or if it would remain a judgment call by the professors after the Provost encourages professors to accept double-sided documents.

For all of the hemming and hawing certain members of the Senate did during the period questioning, the recommendation passed with only two votes against it. The whole ordeal was finally over with at 8:24 p.m. The Senate spent 22 minutes arguing about something they had no intention of rejecting and something that won’t actually do anything. Anything! In my humble opinion, it was a giant waste of time.

I was upset as a constituent and as an observer of the meeting. When only one person was against this recommendation despite the intense amount of scrutiny it got, I was flabbergasted. Their time would have been much better spent looking into items that held much more weight.

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