The Missouri Students Association is holding a special election for a constitutional amendment that would alter the senate’s current seating allocation by splitting academic seats from colleges and university-wide seats.
As of April 16, the MSA senate has 22 empty academic seats, according to the senate roster. Of the senate’s total 81 seats available, only 39 are occupied.
According to previous Maneater reporting, the MSA senate has historically lacked proper representation of all MU academic colleges. Senate Speaker Jacob Addington made the issue a primary focus with the start of the spring semester, hoping that new initiatives, such as the amendment, would help solve the issue.
“This is my third year and we’re actually at the fullest we’ve ever been this year,” Addington said. “We’ve dropped off a little since the fall semester. We started with 14 people last semester and these seats are rarely utilized and evey college will still have a seat. It’ll just cut down on some of them and that way we can reapportion and allow more people to run for different colleges.”
Student voting ends at 6 p.m. on April 17. In a press release from MSA, it said the amendment’s purpose is to increase the number of seats held.
“The constitutional amendment would split seats between various colleges and university-wide seats,” the press release said. “College senators would represent their individual academic college, while university-wide senators would represent the campus as a whole.”
Addington authored the amendment and passed it through the senate on April 2.
“The main thing is right now we have 50 seats and each of those seats are tied to an academic college,” Addington said. “The goal with this is to free up some of those because of a lot of those seats haven’t been used. We’ve reached out to a lot of student councils. Last election we reached out to all the deans and we still weren’t filling them.”
In addition to the special election, the MSA inaugurated President Jennifer Sutterer and Vice President Mary O’Brien on April 16, ushering in MSA’s new presidential administration. They are replacing former MSA President Julia Wopata and Vice President Connor McAteer.
Sutterer and O’Brien ran on a platform emphasizing income-sharing agreements, an alternative way for students to pay for student loans, and improving MU’s mental health services. They defeated opponents Solomon Davis and Briana Dinwiddie during the presidential election.
_Edited by Ethan Brown | ebrown@themaneater.com_
