SGA Questions Adherence to Bylaws

The 48th Legislature of the Student Government Association (SGA) convened Monday evening for its first meeting since before winter break.

SGA had no bills on its daily calendar. However, it did assign three new bills from its first-readings agenda for the Governance Committee to review.

Since SGA had relatively few legislative operations to handle, the meeting primarily consisted of various reports and updates from individual members.

During Committee reports, College sophomore and SGA Campus Services Chairman Max Zoberman announced several changes, including that Campus Services will now offer locker space in Eagle’s Landing of the Dobbs University Center (DUC) for student organizations looking for further storage room.

Zoberman also explained that the Night Owl program, which had provided a late-night shuttle service from Clairmont Campus to Main Campus, has been discontinued in order to expand SafeRide, a late-night safety escort program, and other shuttle routes.

He noted that repurposing the Night Owl buses would make the SafeRide program considerably more efficient and possibly cut wait times in half.

Zoberman mentioned that new safety walks were forthcoming in order to further inspect Emory’s security infrastructure.

Finally, he said that the new update for the Emory Mobile app would provide a more accessible emergency contact call button that would allow people to receive help more easily, reducing the number of steps and screens involved in order to reach the call button.

Candler School of Theology graduate student employee James Crowe (‘14C) also spoke to the SGA about today’s University Senate (US) vote on updating the Senate’s bylaws.

According to Crowe, this vote is the result of his discovery that the Senate’s lack of participation in University policy-making processes violates the University’s bylaws, which stipulate that “all changes in existing policies or the establishment of new policies relating to matters of general University interest shall be reviewed by the Senate.”

Crowe argued that the University would use a vote by the Senate to change that clause of the Senate’s bylaws from “shall be reviewed” to “may be reviewed” as a recommendation to the Board of Trustees that they should update the University’s bylaws in the same way.

Crowe said he feared that such a change would effectively end faculty governance at Emory.

- By Luke White, SGA Beat Writer

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