On Wednesday March 14th, 2007 a Special General Meeting was held in order to discuss a number of issues that were not revealed to the general student population. The meeting was called by Kuda Mutamba and was held for over 3 hours in the Campus Center behind locked doors, open only to those in the Senate.
This meeting was reportedly held to settle internal disputes within the senate, including communication problems among senate members. Members of the senate including Student Body President Michael C. Metzger and Kuda Mutamba did not respond to emails inquiring about the meeting.
Henry Nsang, Publicity Coordinator for the Student Senate, claimed that the meeting was not held due to excessive bickering and conflicts between specific senators. Nsang did acknowledge that was sometimes a lack of understanding between older senators and new ones, but insisted that that was not the reason the meeting was called. Nsang declined to offer specific names or conflicts.
Topics such as the decision-making process, senate attendance policy, accountability of senators, executive authority, By-Laws and the constitution were all discussed and debated during the meeting.
The main purpose of the conference was to come up with answers to these problems and to have the senators more aware of these existing conflicts. Because there were so many issues discussed, the senators did not have enough time to converse about possible remedies.
Due to these time constraints there will be follow-up meetings held, none of these meeting had been scheduled at the time this article was written. Senators were advised to come prepared to the meeting with potential ideas.
“The meeting was very positive,” says Nsang “it was a way to assess ourselves and to make things work better for the senate.”
Nsang did refer to Kelly Meehan, Leah Moyo and Joyce Morgan in facilitating the meeting.
The student government will be seeing changes in membership soon when they hold their annual election in late April. To join the Student Senate students have to fill out an application online. The Senate then checks the student’s background to make sure they match certain criteria; students then start their campaign to become elected. The rest of the University’s community is able to vote online for the senators they feel would best represent their college. There has to be at least one representative of each college here at UMass Boston. The nomination deadline was originally March 30, but has been extended to April 5.
The Undergraduate Student Senate serves as a way to have students voices heard, aid student expansion and most importantly to educate. In order to have all this accomplished students have to be involved, sharing concerns and opinions. “We address issues that affect the undergraduate student experience at UMass Boston,” states Metzger, on the Student Senate website.
The Senate represents UMass’ diverse community, so if you’re interested in posting your thoughts about what goes on around the University, the Senate has created a website which allows students to download information about clubs, tutoring, books and much more. The UMass Exchange, www.umassexchange.com, has served as a gateway to many students to speak their minds and to help the community.
Students can find more information about elections and up coming meetings by visiting the Student Government’s website www.sga.umb.edu.