The Missouri Students Association Senate is working to comply with liaison requirements in the MSA bylaws, Senate Speaker Jacob Sloan said.
Currently, many committees are not in compliance with the liaison requirements outlined in the bylaws.
Sloan said he plans to launch a new feature on the MSA website that would keep committee chairs accountable for appointing liaisons and making sure those liaisons attend the required meetings.
Sloan said he wanted to make it clear the compliancy issue was his responsibility, not his senators.
“Ultimately I’m responsible for everything that goes on in Senate,” he said. “I’m trying to correct a mistake that has become a precedent among speakers.”
The new website feature will allow committee chairs to upload notes from every meeting they attend. Anyone who views the MSA website will have access to these notes.
The current bylaws outline specific campus organizations each committee is required to meet with, as well as specific numbers of liaisons for each organization. Most of the committees are not sending the correct number of liaisons to the organizations mentioned in the bylaws, and some organizations have been missed all together.
One of the committees not in compliance with the bylaws is Academic Affairs. Chapter 2.64 section C of the MSA bylaws states the Academic Affairs committee should be sending liaisons to meet with the Vice Provost of Undergraduate Studies, Faculty Council, Staff Council, the Committee on Undergraduate Studies and specific academic councils.
During the fall 2011 semester, Academic Affairs Committee chairman Ben Levin said he met with the Vice Provost twice and attended all of the Faculty Council meetings, but failed to attend any Staff Council or academic council meetings. In addition, Levin was the one attending all of the meetings, and the bylaws require him to appoint senators from within the committee to be liaisons for specific organizations.
Levin said he filled all of the liaison appointment spots outlined in the bylaws at the senate committee meeting on Tuesday. The liaisons will be official as soon as Sloan approves the appointments.
“We’ll be in compliance with the bylaws by next week,” Levin said.
In compliance with the bylaws, an Academic Affairs committee member will be attending Arts and Science Student Council meetings on a rotating basis.
Arts and Science Student Council President Drake Douglas said he thinks working with MSA will be a great opportunity for the council to get involved with student issues.
“Surely our influence within the College of Arts and Science could be beneficial (on student issues),” he said in an email Thursday.
Douglas said the council has been self-sufficient up until now without MSA’s help.
“I don’t really view the absence of a liaison at our meetings as a detraction from what we try to achieve here on campus,” Douglas said in the email.
Sloan said the poor liaison record of MSA Senate committees is the result of years of precedent set by prior speakers. He also said the bylaws were not made clear to committee chairs.
“It was a failure on our part,” he said.
Chapters 2.63 through 2.70 of the MSA bylaws, which outline the requirements of each senate committee, state that the liaison appointments are “required to attend only those meetings that are appropriate to the schedule of those Councils and necessary to accomplish the charge of the appointment.” Levin said he believes the phrase is up for interpretation.
“The charge of those appointments will be to maintain contact with those organizations and to be in a support position with them,” he said. “Whether that requires attending every single meeting, my understanding is that that’s to the discretion of me and (Sloan).”
