The stakes are high, attendance is low

By: Bianca Caramento 

Members are elected to the SRA to do a job. When they fail to do that job, there ought to be consequences. As of right now, that’s not necessarily the case.

When members fail to attend committee meetings, they essentially get off scot-free. This is a problem because committee meetings are where the real work gets done. For instance, committees regulate the MSU services that we pay for every year.   

Unlike poor attendance in the Assembly, members who fail to attend committee meetings do not have to relinquish their seats as members of the SRA. Instead, they are removed from the committee, with the option to seek remittance immediately. Being removed for all of five minutes hardly enforces responsibility among elected members. It should come as no surprise, then, that members have been repeatedly removed from committees due to continued absence.

This has two repercussions. First, voters are not properly represented. The duty they entrust to their student representative is easily taken for granted when members can forego duties without consequence.

Second, poor attendance often obstructs governance entirely. As per Section 6.5 of Bylaw 3B, quorum on standing committees is 50 percent of voting members. That means, for the meeting’s proceedings to be considered valid, attendance has to be sustained. There are only seven voting members in each committee, making it rather easy to break quorum and obstruct governance. That is precisely what happened on Oct. 15, 2014, for instance, when the Operations Committee Meeting was cancelled “due to lack of attendance by committee members.” This is not uncommon.

We can prevent poor attendance by establishing consequences. The same consequences that apply to poor attendance in the assembly ought apply to poor committee attendance.

That’s my goal if elected to the SRA.