This Week in Senate: March 29, 2021

On Monday, March 29, 2021 the Northeastern Undergraduate Senate met for a full-body meeting, beginning with the announcement of an anonymous Senate Mental Health form for meetings. This form will allow students to call for a recess in the event that they would like to pause the meeting given that the Senate is often responsible for discussing difficult conversations. In the form, there can be a request to change the course of conversation or even provide feedback without calling for a recess. Additionally, the last two full-body meetings of the semester will take place 4/5 and 4/19. There will be no meeting 4/12 due to the academic holiday.

A recess in the meeting was called in order to have a discussion about the EDoDEI position without the constraints of Robert’s Rules. The purpose of this conversation was to figure out what senators felt the position was supposed to achieve and what support systems can be put in place to make such goals possible. This dialogue was very productive and brought up important points that will be taken into account as SGA works to address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the future. Following this conversation, the meeting was resumed.

The next portion of the meeting was Internal Elections. For each position, candidates were listed. Each candidate was allowed to give a speech, required to partake in a question and answer period, and then asked to leave the meeting for debate and voting. Debates were held in an Executive Session, and votes were cast by secret ballot. The following individuals were elected:

• Comptroller: Syaad Khan

• VP for Academic Affairs: Alexander Arenas

• VP for Student Affairs: Emily Perez

• VP for Student Involvement: Robbie Neumann

• VP for Student Services: Sebastian Chávez

• VP for Sustainability: Zach Greenwald

• Elections Chair: Sam Chaturvedi

The meeting was then adjourned at 10:53 pm. The next Senate meeting will be held on April 5th at 7pm on Zoom.