Because not enough university senators showed up to yesterday’s meeting, senate Chairwoman Linda Mabbs was forced to adjourn the meeting before it began.
Marvin Breslow has been attending University Senate meetings for more than 30 years, and before yesterday he couldn’t recall attending a meeting that ended before it even began.
But after too few senators showed up to yesterday’s meeting and the body could not meet its quorum — meaning the meeting could not be held due to low turnout, according to the senate’s bylaws — Senate Chairwoman Linda Mabbs had no choice but to adjourn the meeting. And with only one senate meeting left in the semester, the body will be forced to pack two meetings’ worth of material into the final session next month.
In addition to reviewing the Campus Affairs safety report focusing on scooter safety, the senate was also supposed to review a childcare proposal and details of the new General Education plan’s implementation — agenda items that include some of the biggest issues that would have been dealt with in the body this year.
Breslow, the senate’s parliamentarian, said although he’s confident the body will still get through all of the agenda items from yesterday’s meeting next month — noting that any business left unfinished will be held over until the fall — it will be more difficult at the next meeting, the first for new senators.
“There’s a lot of new stuff and a lot of new senators, which makes it a little awkward,” Breslow said. “They won’t be as familiar with the business, but we’ll get through it.”
Undergraduate student senator Lisa Crisalli said she was running late to the meeting from her teaching assistantship and planned to attend, but by the time she had arrived, it had already been adjourned.
“I had no idea they wouldn’t meet quorum,” Crisalli, who’s also the SGA’s vice president of academic affairs, said. “I know the workload definitely does pick up this time of the year, which could definitely factor into it. … This time of the year, it is really hard to keep track of all your engagements, but I really don’t know why people wouldn’t be able to email if they couldn’t make it.”
Senate Executive Secretary and Director Reka Montfort said if senators had submitted excused absence forms — each senator is allotted three per semester — the body would have been able to meet its quorum, since it is based on the number of senators expected to attend the meeting.
“For excused absences, when someone tells us they can’t attend, we subtract them from the total number of eligible senators,” she said “If people tell us in advance they are not coming to a meeting, it helps our quorum calculation.”
Mabbs said although she was “disappointed” with yesterday’s turnout, she understands that faculty and student senators have a lot going on at this time of the year, noting that the low turnout could be attributed to the upcoming Easter holiday weekend.
“It’s the time of the year the faculty are very busy and students are getting ready for exams and graduation,” she said. “If we’d had people say they couldn’t be here, we could’ve had the meeting, but people also forget. Usually everyone’s pretty good about it.”
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