Before University of Maryland student Maya Spaur joined the University Senate and became a member of the Senate Executive Committee in the fall, the senior environmental science and technology and government and politics major spent much of her college career unfamiliar with the governing body.
“I didn’t know too much about the senate before, only that they decided on a lot of policies, most of which pertained to faculty,” said Spaur, a student senator representative for the behavioral and social sciences college.
Spaur likely wasn’t alone in her unfamiliarity with the senate. Just 413 graduate students and 1,326 undergraduate students voted in last year’s student senate election. To put those numbers into perspective, there were 10,611 graduate students enrolled at this university in fall 2016 and 28,472 undergraduate students enrolled in fall 2016, according to this university’s Office of Institutional Research, Planning and Assessment.
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“With the Student Government Association, people need to interact with it for student funding, but the senate does policy where students aren’t really forced to interact with us, and if you aren’t forced to interact with it, you won’t know about it,” said J.T. Stanley, a student senator also on the committee. “Because people think it’s insignificant, you get less students running and then less people show up to the meetings, and it creates this cycle — less than half of student senators show up to the meetings.”
Senate director Reka Montfort said the Senate’s primary role is to “give the campus community perspective on guiding documents and policies for the university and to advise university President Wallace Loh on these concerns.” These matters include, but are not limited to: education, personnel, campus-community, and facilities, as well as faculty, staff and student affairs, according to the senate website.
“Our model of government is unique in that we have a University Senate which includes faculty, staff and students, which allows every member of the campus community to shape policy within this university,” Montfort said. “We allow everyone to have a voice in the process, which I think allows us to have more comprehensive policies that meet the needs of our constituencies on our campus.”
Having a senate that includes a variety of student positions isn’t the norm, Montfort said, as most universities only have faculty positions. In fact, this university only adopted that policy in the 1970s, and only four Big Ten schools employ a shared governance system that includes students, faculty and staff in one joint decision-making body, according to a March 2016 Diamondback article.
The senate is made up of 222 senators in total, which includes 139 faculty, 24 staff, 10 graduate students and 27 undergraduate students, according to the senate website. Seven single-member representatives and 15 deans fill out the remaining seats.
Undergraduate students are represented by college — meaning for every 1,000 full-time undergraduate students enrolled in a college they get one undergraduate student senator, Montfort said. Student senators serve a one-year term and elections are held every year. Graduate students elect 10 representatives at large for one-year terms, according to the senate website. Faculty and staff senators are elected for three-year terms.
Anyone who is a part of the campus community can submit a proposal for the senate to consider, Montfort said. From there, one of the 10 standing committees, such as the Student Conduct Committee and Faculty Affairs Committee, is charged with the issue. That committee then researches the proposal at length and makes recommendations to the Senate Executive Committee, which makes sure all the information necessary is provided for the senate to make a decision.
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Once approved by the Senate Executive Committee, the senate makes the final review and votes on the proposal at its monthly meeting. If approved, the proposal is sent to the president for approval.
Besides committees, the senate is also made up of university councils and task forces. Councils are permanently established to exercise an integrated advisory role over specified campus units and their associated activities, according to the senate website — such as the Athletic Council, “which advises the President on all matters relating to intercollegiate athletics.”
Councils and task forces are jointly sponsored by the senate, the campus administration and the chief administrative officer(s) of the designated unit(s), according to the website. Task forces are typically established on a temporary basis to work on a specific task or activity, such as the Sexual Assault Prevention Task Force, which was created in 2016 to come up with ways to better prevent sexual assault on the campus.
Brandon Dula, assistant director of the Multicultural Involvement Community Advocacy Office of the Center for Campus Life, first became involved in the senate about eight years ago and is currently part of the Athletic Council.
“What I didn’t know before joining the senate is that most of the work is done in the committees,” Dula said. “As a senator you just come to the meetings, read what is going on and what a committee is proposing, and then you vote. But the main role is on the committee — they are doing research, interviewing people and discussing these proposals at length for months.”
To increase student participation in the senate, Stanley said the senate needs to do a better job of promoting itself.
“The senate has this issue of not being applicable to student lives, so it is important to have continual leadership and to go out and engage people,” Stanley added.
The senate currently sends out campus-wide emails during the student election process, and offers a table at the First Look Fair, Montfort said. She added that more information about their governing body can be found on their various social media accounts and website.
“I encourage people to reach out to their representatives if they have any questions because they are a really good resource and they do want to hear from you,” Spaur said. “In the next few weeks elections go live and I encourage everyone to vote — it’s an open process, we want to see more diversity within the Senate and next year I encourage more people to run because when more students are engaged it makes the process better.”
The senate election starts Monday. Students can vote up until March 3.
