The student governments of joint session passed three resolutions in their semesterly meeting Tuesday.
Joint session is composed of 10 student governments: the Missouri Students Association, the Residence Halls Association, the Legion of Black Collegians, Four Front, the Interfraternity Council, the Panhellenic Association, and the National Pan-hellenic Council, the Multicultural Greek Council, the Graduate Professional Council and the Missouri International Student Council. Each government receives one vote on joint session legislation. All organizations were in attendance.
The third piece of legislation discussed, Resolution 16-03, took up the majority of time. The resolution establishes a joint session subcommittee, made up of one individual appointed by the president from each of the governments, to create a new proposed form of governing documents.
Governing documents codify and record joint session “in order to ensure its future success in representing the students of the University of Missouri,” according to Resolution 16-03. Missouri Students Association President Sean Earl said the new subcommittee’s composition of documents intends to “solidify the structure of joint session.”
The current joint session governing documents are almost three years old. The subcommittee’s purpose is to reevaluate those articles and to focus on improving the organization of joint session.
A similar idea was proposed at [last semester’s joint session](https://www.themaneater.com/stories/2016/4/27/joint-session-calls-mu-divest-prison-labor/). That resolution would have created a steering committee of representatives to plan future joint session meetings. The resolution was tabled after discussion on the legislation became an off-topic conversation on the overall organization of the meetings.
The subcommittee would present the proposed governing documents to President’s Council for review and eventually joint session in spring 2017. President’s Council is a meeting between presidents of joint session governments twice a semester.
The legislation would give the President’s Council the authority to manage the subcommittee responsible for drafting joint session’s governing documents. Some representatives disagreed on how much power the council would have in comparison to joint session as a result of the subcommittee.
“I saw a little bit of a disagreement on how much power the President’s Council actually has compared to joint session under the collected rules of joint session,” Senate Speaker Mark McDaniel said. “Due to the subcommittee, right now the President’s Council is getting its first official power through joint session to manage the subcommittee.”
Two amendments were added to the resolution specifying President’s Council’s control and creation of the subcommittee. Even with the amendments, the Legion of Black Collegians and the Panhellenic Association both voted against the resolution.
The other two resolutions,16-01 and 16-02, passed unanimously.
Resolution 16-01 signs the organizations of joint session onto the “It’s On Us” campaign. Several organizations had already signed the pledge or worked to expand awareness of “It’s On Us”. IFC is also requiring all members to sign the pledge themselves this year.
Resolution 16-02 establishes the Latino/a Graduate Professional Network and the Association of Black Graduate and Professional Students as official members of joint session.
_Edited by Emily Gallion | egallion@themaneater.com_