Committee on Internal Affairs
09/05/2024, 7pm, the LaB
Present: Daarian, Amy, Molly, Jaden, Tyler Absent: Nasreen, Jennifer, Adithyan, Omar, Ivan-Alexander, Sun
*Due to insufficient number of members, we cannot vote during this meeting. However, we plan on going to have a quick meeting before the next GBM and put it into second reading during cohort time.
- Daar summarized that this bill will lower the number of CSE members from seven to five so that we do not need to recruit members and focus on other initiatives.
- Everyone present agreed with this amendment.
- Jaden mentioned that there was an admin that spoke more than 1h 15m. He wants to discuss speaker time. He intends on adding cohort time under 4.2.1.8.
- Molly highlighted that this addition will not change
- Jaden does not want there to be ambiguity in the Bylaws.
- Daar asked if we need to change “Director of Social Affairs” to “Director of Communications.” Jaden said we don’t need to but we should.
- Amy asked if we can add that to the Rules Bill. Jaden will add that to the Bill.
- Daar asked for clarification about weekly press releases from chairs for the Director of Communications. Since we are not enforcing it this year, we should remove this from the
- Daar noted a discrepancy between Vice President and President of the Senate for 4.1.2.1.4.5.1. Jaden mentioned that there was a bill from two years ago that mentioned the differences but this edit may have been overlooked. Given this, we decided to change this wording directly.
- Daar discussed how people aren’t as engaged in GBM and not everyone votes in the verbal vote. Jaden clarified how this is the purpose of Robert’s Rules so this should not be an issue.
09/12/24, 7-8pm, the LaB Present: Daarian, Amy, Jaden, Molly, Adithyan, Jennifer, Ivan-Alexander, Tyler, Jackson, Sun Absent: Nasreen (Excused)
- Daarian thanked us for coming and introduced Jackson to talk about the Attendance Amendment.
- Jackson opened the floor to the committee for input on the Amendment.
- Jaden clarified procedure on amendments post-committee: amended legislation need not go back to committee before final voting.
- Jackson explained the need for clarity on the role of the Executive within the senate i.e. the status quo of viewing the Executive as Senators to apply attendance rules to them
- He also talked about the sections of the Amendment that have to do with the Judiciary,
- Daarian asked for more information about the attendance requirements for the Judiciary, to which Jackson explained that they would hold themselves to the same standard (4 unexcused absences)
- Jackson explained that if impeachments were to continue to be a thing with a full-strength SGA, large amounts of time would be spent on the trial with very little likelihood of removal. Instead, the new system would just initiate removal after 4 unexcused absences. Jackson also answered Daar’s questions about impeachments and said that disciplinary measures could be added onto the process,
- Amy asked about the side results of the removal of the impeachment trial, i.e. whether or not the deterrent against future unexcused absences would be lost if the automatic impeachment were to be nullified.
- Jackson directed the committee to Sec. 4.3.3.2.1 of the bylaws i.e. the notification requirement of the Student Body Secretary to tell Senators when they accrue 2 unexcused absences.
- Amy asked if having Buse email an absentee Senator would be sufficient. Jackson answered that the Amendment established just a baseline for communication, and explained that SGA had leeway to figure out further ways of communicating absences.
- Amy suggested that having Buse weigh in on this would be helpful.
- Alex asked for a summary of the changes in the bill, which Daarian provided
- Jackson explained further that his bill gave the bylaws the flexibility to have Chief Members of each SGA branch require attendance at specific meetings outside of the Constitutionally required ones.
- Amy asked if this bill applied to the Programming Council. Jackson said that the bill created the space for the bylaws to require the Programming Council to come to things
- Amy thanked Jackson for his work on the bill
- Daarian moved to vote on approving the bill to go to second reading, and the committee gave its unanimous approval. Jackson had to leave a little early.
- Discussion of the Rules Bill began
- Tyler asked why the threshold to exercise the right to waive the request for permission from Charles to email admin was reduced from 3 to just one
- Daarian explained that this made it easier for accountability and that it made more sense because the student body President had much more facetime with the advisors
- Jaden proposed applying time limits to admin guest speakers, but this idea proved unpopular with the committee.
- Amy suggested bringing up improving engagement for stuff like votes at the Senate
- Jaden said that the academic senators did not want to remove 4.1 1.6 from the bill and were prepared to vote against it
- Daar proposed making an adjustment to the amendment, establishing a minimum of one academic senator on the academic affairs committee.
- Daar moved to send it to second reading, unanimously approved.
- Daar wanted to talk about future goals for the IA committee.
- He suggested that when not actively working on bills, we should skim through the bylaws to look for inconsistencies, and that we should read through the bylaws when possible
- “SGA Book club” we plan to discuss sections of the bylaws when we meet and are not working on a bill actively
- Daar encouraged us to write amendments to the bylaws and propose them to the committee
- Jenny asked for Daar to include the required sections in the agenda for each meeting. He agreed.
10/03/2024, 7pm, the LaB
Present: Daar, Amy, Jennifer, Alex, Sun, Vishnu Absent (Unexcused): Nasreen, Adithyan, Omar, Tyler, Jaden
IA Revisions of JHU SGA Bylaws April 2024
- Vishnu discussed creating a GroupMe for SGA and committees.
- Daar discussed the removal of the membership requirement for the CMC and PRDC (at least five voting Communication and Marketing Aides).
- Amy suggested rewriting the Bylaws such that the requirements will be at the discretion of the Director of Communications and Director of Research.
- Amy suggested changing SAC guidelines that SAC is to be established at the discretion of the SGA Treasurer. Additionally, the number of voting commissioners will be at the discretion of the SGA Executive Treasurer.
- Everyone agreed to these potential amendments.
- Everyone agreed to create an iMessage group chat for IA.