The Student Government Association held a special session on Thursday, June 1 with the intention of swearing in senators before the fall semester.
Regina Pergola/ The Lion's Roar
The newly appointed President of the Student Government Association Seth Leto, Chief Justice Ali LeBlanc and Vice President Richard Davis Jr. held a special session.
LeBlanc explained that the session was intended to efficiently swear in senators.
“We swore in the people who could be here just so we could save some time and hit the ground running come fall,” said LeBlanc. “We went over some by-law revisions that me, Seth and Richard have been working on. We just kind of pointed out what would be changed. They couldn’t vote on that today, but they will be voting on that the first meeting. We also went over the constitutional amendments.”
Though the leaders of SGA meet regularly, this was the first meeting with senators and justices. It was held on June 1, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Room 107 of Fayard Hall.
“We all meet all the time,” said LeBlanc. “We pretty much don’t do anything without informing the other. This is our first official meeting though.”
The outcome of the meeting was determined by the level of involvement from the senators and justices, as well as the amount of productivity from the meeting.
“I think it went well,” said Leto. “We got accomplished what we needed to. We got people approved who needed to be approved. We got the by-law revisions and the constitution revisions on the agenda so that way the first meeting of the fall semester, we can vote to approve those, which is important because elections are early this year. If we are going to amend the constitution, it has to be voted on by the student body. We wanted to get that completely done by the time the election comes around so that it can be on the ballot. Ultimately, I think it went well.”
This meeting saw Davis as the chairperson of the special session meeting for the first time.
“At first I was nervous,” said Davis. “After we got into the swing of things I calmed down. I think it went pretty well. We have 25 senators total, and we need ultimately 20 to be appointed. We appointed 17 today, so, we have a few more we need to get sworn in but I think we got a good jump start on that. I think it was nice to get a feeling of how the senate meetings ran and also for us to get some hands-on experience. We’ve all sat through meetings before, but we’ve never been at the forefront of the meeting. It was kind of a new experience for them as well as a new experience for us.”
LeBlanc was responsible for swearing in each of the newly appointed senators and justices.
“I was just excited to see what kind of leaders we had coming into SGA,” said LeBlanc. “Because honestly and truly, without the senate, what we want to get done, we can’t. We want a strong senate so that all of the good ideas that we have can come to life. So, it was nice seeing their plans and what they want to do.”