The first meeting of the K-State Student Governing Association was held Thursday night in the K-State Student Union’s Big 12 Room. After roll call, representatives from K-State Athletics and the Kansas branch of the American Federation of Teachers took the floor during open period.
Adam Prough, assistant director for K-State Athletics, announced that more than 1800 student football tickets have been sold thus far, approaching the all-time record. According to Prough, tickets are no longer available through iSIS but can still be purchased at the ticket office.
The next speaker, Bryan Pfeifer of the American Federation of Teachers, addressed his organization’s steadfast opposition to Kansas’ cuts to higher education funding. He announced that AFT will be present on campus in the coming months handing out literature and speaking to students and faculty.
After the open period the senate got down to the business of approving appointments. 36 resolutions appointing senators and committee members were unanimously approved over the course of nearly an hour.
“A lot of times the president just kind of makes all those appointments, like a rubber-stamp process, but it is in our bylaws that it has to go through Senate, so it’s pretty standard to just push through appointments,” said Speaker of the Senate Kyle Nuss, senior in architectural engineering.
Once the appointments had been approved, two bills were addressed.
The first, Bill 13/14/01, entitled “Amendments to the Kansas State University Student Governing Association By-Laws Concerning the Housing and Dining Services Judicial Boards,” is a bylaw change that Nuss said mirrors a change to the SGA Constitution that passed last semester, but has yet to take effect. Bill 13/14/01 was sent back to its committee until the Constitutional change is approved by five of the nine college counsels or a five-month waiting period expires.
Another bill, 13/14/03, was introduced Thursday. The bill, which Nuss described as standard procedure, would allow unused funds from student group allocations to be moved back to SGA’s reserve account.
During the second open period President Eli Schooley addressed the Senate announcing that interviews will be held Tuesday with five architecture firms for the K-State Student Union expansion project. After the interviews, which Schooley said would take from 8 a.m. to around 2:30 p.m., he and the other voting members of the selection committee, K-State Student Union director Bill Smriga and university architect Abe Fattaey, will convene to make a decision.
“I’m looking for tangible signs of past experience in getting student body input,” Schooley said, adding that Smriga and Fattaey would be examining other areas of the presentations based on their professional expertise.
Schooley said the projected date of groundbreaking for the expansion is currently spring of 2015. The building process is expected to take two to three years, which sets the date students can expect a renovated K-State Student Union sometime in 2018.
The Student Senate will reconvene next Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Big 12 Room.
