The Associated Student Body Student Senate Tuesday discussed student safety and member conduct during meetings and allocated $300 toward sending its board members to the Fall Leadership Summit.
Student Senate President Garrett Kegel opened up a very tense meeting on Tuesday by addressing the recent disjuncture on the board.
“We are elected officials and we represent 30,000 students, so how can we represent the students if we can’t act as a team?” said Kegel. “We have to be polite and respectful and not use the meetings to carry out personal vendettas.”
Director of Finance David Hylton took offense to Kegel’s comments and felt that they were unjustly directed at him for a comment that he made during last week’s Joint Budget Committee (JBC) meeting.
“I find it offensive that I’m being reprimanded for using that word in the proper usage,” said Hylton.
Laurie Jones, the Senate’s director of Legislative affairs, said that David Hylton said “homosexuals” and “blacks” while questioning how much should be spent on a proposed equality center.
Kegel and Hylton declined to comment on what exact word it was that Hylton was referring to.
Kegel did say, however, that he was “not directing my comments directly at David (Hylton), but at the board as a whole.”
Tamara Dunning, who acted as student senate president last year, was appointed to the board as a senator.
The Senate went into further discussion on the campus safety resolution that was brought up in their meeting two weeks ago.
The resolution calls for education on crime and sexual assault prevention, the implementation of more technology and the allocation of resources and collaboration between ASB, the administration and the Los Rios Police Department.
“This is the first step to take to improving safety on campus,” said Kegel. “We need more cameras on campus and to implement an improved safety plan.”
James Dillion, a current ARC student and former student at the McGeorge School of Law, took opposition to the wording of resolution.
“It’s not the Senate’s duty to ‘allocate all necessary resources’ to improve safety,” said Dillion. “I just want to make sure that you guys are going about this in a legal way.”
Kegel assured the public that board will be following the “proper legal channels.”
The Senate approved a consent action to allocate $300 to fund ASB attendance at the Fall Leadership Summit.
