Senators walk out of meeting

During the first weekly senate meeting of fall term Wednesday, 10 senators exited the Smith Memorial Student Union.

The uncooperative nature that has surrounded the ASPSU senate since spring term persists to this day. From the spring presidential election, there emerged two groups of senators: those who ran under the Wallace/Zhu ballot and those under the Murphy/Blauer ballot.

The issue that emerged regarded interim senators. During the spring term, ASPSU President Kristin Wallace appointed five interim senators. These appointments are subject to approval from the senate, which has not yet occurred.

The question is whether or not the interim senators are allowed to vote and if they are allowed to count toward quorum.

“We weren’t going to allow this vote to happen illegally. That’s why we walked out,” said Justice McPherson, an ASPSU senator.

Had the five interim senators been able to vote, that would have given the Wallace/Zhu faction the majority.

“This was to be our first meeting since May. We had a lot of things to do, and this type of behavior is just slowing it down,” Wallace said.

Members of the Murphy/Blauer faction claim that numerous times the ASPSU president and her staff have broken constitutional rules.

“Kristin was supposed to appoint members for the evaluation and constitution review committee within 30 days of taking office,” said Josh Morris, ASPSU senate pro-tempore. “As of today, this is still not completed.” The job of the E&CR is to rule on all interpretations of the constitution. Those appointments were on Wednesday’s agenda.

“Without the E&CR, there isn’t much to turn to on issues such as this one,” Morris said.

Dune Zhu, ASPSU vice president, has recently announced a special senate meeting for Friday at 9:15 a.m. On the agenda are evaluation committee appointments and interim senate activities.

The Vanguard will have full news coverage of this meeting in the Tuesday edition.