Recently elected undergraduate senators are citing the need for a Good Samaritan policy and ensuring student voices are heard as their main concerns in the aftermath of an election that drew fewer voters and contestants than last year.
The election for undergraduate representatives in the University Senate — the university’s highest governing body that directly advises university President Dan Mote — began on April 5 and ended Friday. One seat was left uncontested, and officials said there were fewer candidates running in this year’s election — 136 undergraduates participated, compared to the record-breaking 184 students who ran last year. Of the students who ran, only two were re-elected; 22 new senators will serve in the 2010-2011 term. While the newly elected senators have differing views on what issues are the most important, several said they hope to make good on years of student activism to turn the Good Samaritan protocol into university policy.
“Sustaining what’s already been done is really important,” said engineering senator-elect Kaiyi Xie, who also serves on the Presidential Search Committee and is the Student Government Association’s director of student groups. “That means turning the Responsible Action Protocol into a real policy. The administration says it’s kind of a policy but students don’t really know.”
The Responsible Action Protocol, a procedure enabling dangerously intoxicated students to call 911 for themselves or a friend without fear of university discipline, was supported by the senate last year with a catch: It’s not an official policy and can be changed at any given time by the Office of Student Conduct without the consent of the senate, students or Mote.
Although some administrators have said there is little to no practical difference between the protocol and a would-be policy, several newly elected student senators said making sure the protocol is established as a policy is one of their top priorities for next year, when the protocol will come under senate review.
Irina Alexander, senator-elect from the behavioral and social sciences college and president of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, said she ran for the senate position to influence the university at a higher level.
“We’ve been trying to battle Good Samaritan from the grass-roots level up, and the senate has been unwilling to listen to us,” she said. “Instead of trying to talk to them, I decided to become one of them. In the long run, our goal is to get a Good Samaritan policy, instead of a protocol, that includes all drugs. There should never be a situation where a student’s life is at risk.”
Alexander and other senators agreed making the student voice heard by the administration is crucial.
“Generally, we’re disgustingly outnumbered as students,” said Alexander, a junior criminology and criminal justice major. “I want to bring student voice to the senate once and for all. It’s really scary how administrators have taken over our university, which serves the students. Our voices need to be heard.”
Other senators point to establishing a unified social networking presence as a way to reach students and ensure their interests are accurately represented.
“When I was running, I realized a lot of students don’t even know about the senate or what it does,” architecture senator-elect Brian Galloway said. “We need to get the message out about what the senate is by bringing the senate to the student’s level. There’s a senate Facebook page, but it only has six members. We need to further the use of social networking tools because it’s obviously not being used much. It would be so easy — the senate could post updates and students could comment on it.”
Ian Winchester, a senator-elect from the chemical and life sciences college, said the senate doesn’t hear the opinions of the SGA enough, citing the General Education Plan as an example. Last week, the senate voted in favor of the overhaul of the CORE curriculum without any of the amendments the SGA voted in favor of the night before, despite an SGA presence at the meeting.
“It’s very frustrating when the senate doesn’t hear students’ voices,” Winchester said. “When we give them legislation, like with the CORE program, the senate didn’t hear any of our amendments. I want to make the SGA voice directly heard in the senate to make sure the senate hears what students want.”
This year’s election also drew slightly fewer voters than last year. In comparison to the 1,931 undergraduate students who voted in the senate elections last year, 1,788 undergraduates cast their ballots last week. Officials said this drop was most likely because the election was pushed back a month to try and accommodate the SGA and Graduate Student Association elections.
redding@umd.edu
