Without any resolutions up for action this week, the Illinois Student Senate’s meeting mostly revolved around electing committee chairmen and representatives to the University Senate Executive Committee.
The winners of the four committee chair positions are: Jim Maskeri for academic affairs, Damani Bolden for campus affairs, Rae Markwell for public relations and Shao Guo for community and governmental affairs.
Ryan Young, vice president-external of the student senate, said the two most important senate committees are standing and sub-committees. Standing committees, which are the one’s whose chair positions were filled tonight, have general responsibilities of editing and debating resolutions, coordinating events and hearing student concerns.
The new committee chairs will start their positions immediately, Young said.
The senate also elected three members to the Urbana-Champaign Senate Executive Committee, the faculty senate’s leadership body. The winners of that election are: Jim Maskeri, Calvin Lear and Brock Gebhardt.
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In addition to electing committee members and Student Executive Committee members, one of the items that was a resolution that would issue a statement in favor of peaceful student demonstrations.
Senator Matt Gold, author of the resolution and junior in LAS, said he has yielded concerns over demonstrations on campus that make students uneasy.
“We as a student government shouldn’t support demonstrations that cause students to fear going to class. It would say we favor peace on campus,” Gold said.
One of the recent examples of demonstrations that caused unease was the Students for Justice for Palestine’s erected wall on the Quad side of the English Building. Gold said some students found members of the demonstration to be too forceful in their protest.
The resolution drew many questions from the board, including what constitutes a peaceful demonstration and if it’s appropriate for the senate to make such a statement.
Student Trustee-elect David Pileski said the senate has voiced support for student demonstrations in the past.
