Recently elected Student Government Association President Yevin Roh vetoed last week’s SGA Senate’s motion to ask Chancellor Robert Holub to delay approval of the Faculty Senate resolution which will ban tobacco from campus.
In a close 20-to-10 vote, the SGA failed to overturn the veto during Wednesday night’s meeting.
Roh’s main problem with the motion was that it insinuated that students did not participate in the process of creating the tobacco-free campus legislation.
“Students were involved at every step along the way,” said the president, who helped write an earlier version of the tobacco-free bill as a freshman. Roh also said that, as a freshman senator, he warned the SGA that this rule was going to happen and they should not have been surprised when it did.
While being questioned by the senate about his veto, Roh said, “It is obvious that we do need a voice [in the tobacco resolution]… but we as students need to show we are the competent adults that we are [and rewrite the motion].”
Roh explained that he was not against the entire motion, but requested that the senate look at the problem and write a new motion with more specificity.
“We can write a better motion that has some deadlines and more factual information,” said Roh.
He explained that he, along with speaker Modesto Montero, met with Vice Chancellor Jean Kim, who told the president and speaker that she would not approve the motion in its current form.
Montero clarified Roh’s points.
“There was student input, but maybe there wasn’t sufficient input,” he said. “As a body [the SGA] was not involved.”
Roh, Montero and the senators that spoke were all in favor of student input, and agreed that more could be involved with the faculty senate’s tobacco-free campus resolution.
Andrew Prowten, former secretary of outreach and a student involved with the Faculty Senate, came before the senate to further explain the tobacco-free campus rule.
He said that some version of the rule has been being discussed for the past 20 years. Prowten’s major addition to the rule was advocating against a $100 fine that was initially discussed.
When asked why the resolution covered all tobacco products, not just cigarettes or smoke, Prowten explained that the Faculty Senate specifically wanted to be a tobacco-free campus and did not want to set a vague precedent of being “smoke-free.” In clarifying the law as tobacco-free, the Faculty Senate would not have to make changes should marijuana become legalized in the near future.
Additionally, student trustee Mike Fox was questioned on how he will vote for the fee increase and the potential flagship fee.
Although saying that he is “99 percent sure” that the Board of Trustees will get the majority needed to pass a student fee increase, Fox said he will take a “symbolic vote against the fee.”
On the flagship fee, where his vote will most likely be more important, Fox said he is still researching and is unsure of his position.
After repeated questioning, Fox announced, “I am refusing to take any questions about how I am voting on [the flagship fee].”
Senator Zac Broughton brought up Fox’s original campaign promise of not increasing fees. Fox called his promise “naïve.”
“With no fees we would be looking at a drastically different university,” said Fox. “Either more burdens fall on the students or there is a pull back on the service offered.”
Nearly 100 students and SGA members will travel to the statehouse in Boston on April 20 to ask for increased funding for the faculty raises and the University as a whole on Lobby Day.
Any student interested in Lobby Day can visit SurveyMonkey on the UMass Lobby Day Facebook page.
The senate voted to give $2,000 to Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated for seven members to pay for registration fees to attend a national conference.
The Northeast Area Government was given $4,000 to pay for t-shirts, food, beverages, police, EMT’s and inflatables at this year’s Quadfest. The event is traditionally paid for by the Commuter Area Government, but with their assets frozen, they could not fund the event.
Sam Hayes can be reached at [email protected].
Eyewitness • Apr 14, 2011 at 10:36 am
The problem is that all the Faculty Senate’s protestations of pure motives in pushing forward with the tobacco free campus policy amount to exactly nothing as long as they continue to include E-Cigarettes in the ban. These contain no tobacco and produce no smoke, and so should not be covered under any tobacco free OR smoke free policy. Now we come to find out that some members of the SGA were part of the process in getting the Faculty Senate’s bill written and passed, and so now we perhaps know why the policy is so badly written and confusing.
Does anyone else think that given what we now know there should be ever greater demands on the part of students for their various representatives to halt the advancement of this policy until the ridiculous process by which it seems to have been created can be examined?
The Machine • Apr 14, 2011 at 1:10 am
Are you serious? For a kid who I met during campaigning and told me he would listen to all students, he certainly isn’t. The SGA is a farce on this campus and should be removed as it clearly doesn’t have students in mind. We’ll give 2000 to 7 members but ignore the hundreds in protest, and is it any coincidence that he wrote a motion similar to this and is now fighting for his own pet projects? Resume padder, anyone?