In an effort to encourage Gov. Rod Blagojevich to appoint a binding vote to one of the three student members of the Board of Trustees, the Illinois Student Senate passed a resolution at the meeting last Wednesday.

According to the University of Illinois Trustee Act, three student trustees are elected via student referendum from each of the three University campuses to serve on the board. Of these three students, one is appointed by the governor to have an official vote, which counts along with the trustees and serves as a representation for the University students.

“The student vote is advisory and doesn’t have any weight without the binding vote,” said Jaclyn O’Day, president of ISS.

According to the resolution, authored by student senator Rohit Dhake, senior in Business, “The disenfranchisement of the student trustees is a disenfranchisement of the 70,195 students in the University of Illinois system.”

Last year, the binding vote came from the Urbana campus with former student trustee, Chime Asyone, representing the students.

The vote is supposed to rotate to a new campus every year, said Paul Schmitt, student trustee.

“We are now a third of the way into the term, and none of the three student trustees have been appointed,” Schmitt said.

Schmitt, along with his fellow students trustees have lobbied to the governor encouraging him to make the appointment. State legislatures have also contacted the governor asking him to make his appointment.

Rep. Naomi Jakobsson, D-103, is one of the representatives who has contacted the governor asking him to make an appointment.

In her letter, she wrote, “Without having a vote from a student trustee, the students on all three campuses of the University of Illinois are without a voice on the Board of Trustees.”

Jakobsson said she has not been contacted by the governor regarding his decision and does not know why the appointment has not been made.

“He has been very lax, he has a history of being very lax when it comes to making appointments,” Jakobsson said.

Schmitt said the absence of a binding vote for the student trustees has made it difficult for them to represent the students on the three campus because they have no voice in voting on issues that affect students, such as tuition rates, faculty decisions and Global Campus.

“It really makes it hard for us student trustees to work together,” Schmitt said. “It’s impossible for us to really stand up for students without the binding vote.”

He also said appointing the binding vote is fairly routine and should have been made by now.

“I think it’s terrible that student have been without a voice on the Board of Trustees for as long as they have,” Jakobsson said.