JHU SGAThe 114th Session
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Senate General Body Meeting #4 — Minutes (09/15/26)

Minutes / Senate · minutes · 114th session · dated September 15, 2026 · updated September 16, 2026

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114th Johns Hopkins Student Government Association

Senate Meeting #4

September 15, 2026 / 07:00 PM / BSC 404

MINUTES

  1. Call to Order and Attendance (1 min)

    1. Absentees:
      1. Excused:
      2. Unexcused:
    2. Present

  2. Convening Business (30 min)

    1. Presentation and discussion with the Judiciary:
      1. Flow chart of reviewing complaints
      2. Considerations for petitions being evaluated
        1. Needs to cause actual injury, redressability, exhaustion (other appeals were tried first)
      3. Duties : receive query from SGA, interpret governing documents, provide nonbinding guidance to SGA branches
      4. Actions of judiciary : provide binding opinions, emergency injunctions & stays, overturn & modify decisions made SGA bodies, set precedent
      5. Hold internal accountability : collective decision making, decisions require majority, members recuse when conflicts of interest occur, every ruling is publicly available (including concurrences & dissents)
      6. Serve as final appellate body to CSE
        1. Can affirm, modify, or overturn CSE rulings
        2. Responsible for appointing members of CSE
    2. Swearing in of SGA members
      1. Senators: Mamadou
      2. Academic reps: Luke, Boyi, Andrew, Rocio, Mahima
      3. RSOs : Cole, Andrei
      4. Caucus representatives: Kayla, Nifemi, Jazzlyn
      5. Executive : Sumi, Sienna

  3. Amendment and Approval of the Agenda (1 min)

    1. Shreemann: motion to move the second reading before non-legislative business; withdrawn – second reading before first reading, after nonlegislative business
      1. Opposed: Demarri

  4. Public Input (3 min)

  5. Reports (5 min)

    1. Cabinet Reports:
      1. Student Body President: Jason Yu
        1. Encourage SGA members to attend more SGA events to interact with more students
      2. Student Body Vice President: Sumire Sumi
        1. No major updates
      3. Secretary: Honora Muratori
        1. Attendance issues, please reach out to Nora
        2. Peter : point of information regarding attendance tracker
        3. Google calendar coming soon
      4. Treasurer: Amy Xu
        1. Finance committee meeting : finalized all applications; only be handling event grants
          1. Allocated ~$270k/500k budgeted
      5. Chair of Programming: Grace Guan
        1. No major updates
      6. President of the Senate: Jazzlyn Fernandez
        1. SGA website is fully updated today
    2. Advisor Report (2 min):
      1. SGA Advisor: Charles Norman
        1. Tekeya medical emergency, Charles attending more GBMS (~ twice / month)
        2. Clarifying that SGA members do not need approval to speak to Newsletter, referenced message from vice provost)
    3. Senator Reports Initiatives Updates:
      1. Andrei Espelien
        1. CSO committee is organizing prospective org fair (end september, beginning october)
        2. Civic Engagement: reaching out to orgs
      2. Kayla Gonzalez
        1. Student Services event for Hispanic Heritage Month
        2. Event set for Oct 12
          1. Performance
          2. Tabling for Latin orgs
      3. Arjun Jasuja
        1. Cultural RSO initiative: goal to develop better connection between cultural RSOs and SGA
        2. Feedback about communication about SGA funding, not feeling completely represented by SGA
  6. Non-Legislative Business (30 min)
    1. National Call to Action, SGA National Call to Action Pres.pptx - Civic Engagement Chair Jackson Morris
      1. Committee response to National Call to Action document
      2. Concern about promotion of national interests–what does this mean for immigrants and international students?
      3. Importance : no control to what JHU will do to be in good standing in the current administration
        1. JHU sent survey out in response to National Call to Action during SGA meeting (7:06 PM)
      4. JHU’s response will be better and more beneficial for the community if students have a role to play in the decision
      5. Nora : motion for 3 minute recess for people to read the discussed document
      6. Demarri: motion for 10 minute moderated caucus
      7. 10 minute moderated caucus
        1. Jackson: will be a continued conversation; might be effective to reach out to RSOs (ex. have many international students)
        2. Nora: spoken to 5-6 faculty member about their lack of ability to give input on Daniels’ involvement the call to action before it was published
        3. Paul: who would we send to talk to student orgs/other outreach
          1. Jazz: civic engagement committee and exec
        4. Andrei: think about research and engineering RSOs, might be thinking about what to do if their research challenges what the framework calls for
        5. Peter: get Senators more involved with RSOs; potential event in Oct after draft is released
        6. Jackson: on Paul’s point → not civic engagement issue, it’s SGA
        7. Sophia: importance of this topic! This is about whether Hopkins cares about students (not just international) (ex. first gen), please read the released document; not fair that administration makes a blanket statement for all students
        8. Abraham: whether to give JHU input via as individuals of SGA or as SGA as a whole
        9. Paul: Is there a faculty senate? yes
        10. Jackson: cross institutional student advisory committee, no real advisory committee for students (ex. where was the student opinions on overloading credits, FAs)
        11. Nora: timing of this form; after faculty, newsletter, and SGA reached out; this is reactionary
        12. Kai: possibly make an action plan (for surveying people and reaching out to RSO senators) to keep people accountable; Jackson would be point of contact for following up on this

  7. Second Reading (10 min)

    1. a. Prospective student organization fair funding bill - CSO Chair Kevin Xu
      1. Prospective orgs limited in how they can reach out to people, real way get those first ten members for the club application
      2. Host event for prospective orgs to be able to connect with students and promote their org
        1. Ice cream fair at the Beach
      3. Date pushed to October 2nd
      4. Andrei addressing concern about finding people interested: has access to the people who attended the interest meeting for creating a new org
        1. No registration last year; projected for twice as many people attending for prospective orgs
      5. Motion to pass the bill
    2. b. Clarifying Legislative Roles and Processess Act (CLeRPA) - VPOTS and Chair of Internal Affairs Shreemann Patel
      1. Concern about two women and gender minority and Black caucus representatives; officially 1 serving for each caucus
      2. Retained AAPI caucus position
      3. Nora: motion to amend the bylaws so that there doesn’t need to be another meeting with executive: wrong
    3. c. S-B.114.09.08.2026-1 | The Accountability Act - VPOTS and Chair of Internal Affairs Shreemann Patel
      1. RC: motion to amend the bylaws so that there doesn’t need to be another meeting with executive: right
      2. Cole: motion for 5 minute q&a, 1 minute speaking parts
        1. Cole: still have impeachment trial for people with excused absences, do we want to get rid of any impeachment trial
        2. Peter: Yields time to Jackson
        3. Jackson: could save time to not have trials
        4. Emin: Clarifying what classified as unescused absences
        5. Mahima: context of reason for absences
        6. Shreemann: proportion of time missed is important, some left up to the discretion of the presiding officer
        7. Mahima: make short list of reasons that are considered excused; within rules book
        8. Emin: Seems wrong to give up right of legislative body
        9. Nora: certain context (ex. family emergencies) that gives many absences warrants discussion; not automatically dismissed

  8. First Reading (20 min)

    1. Phi Delta Theta Crab Fest Funding Bill 2026.docx - Senator Mamadou Thiam
      1. Asking for partial funding to buy the crabs
      2. Served 500 patrons last year
      3. Proceeds go toward Live like News foundation
      4. Jackson: motion for 5 minute moderated caucus
        1. Syd: motion to discharge to second reading
        2. Jackson: important not to immediately pass
        3. Isaac: what is the extra money used for, the cost of crabs is much lower
        4. Paul: last year some of the numbers did add up, would feel more comfortable sending to finance committee, main mission of SGA is to support students
        5. Veda: not all crabs were used last year, make sure to lower the amount
          1. Delt rep: yes being considered
        6. Paul: remembers leftover bushels of crabs
          1. Delt rep: donated the rest of the crabs to staff (working on the event) at Hopkins
        7. Shreemann: motion to discharge to finance, passes
    2. Pi Beta Phi 5k Fundraising - President of the Senate Jazzlyn Fernandez
      1. November 14
      2. Profits benefit read lead achieve philanthropy
      3. Has permission from Hopkins for 5K, close to getting approval from city
      4. Has donations-based sponsors and volunteering and tabling sponsors
      5. Pi Phi is covering a lot of their own fees
    3. Trick or Treat Funding Bill - Senator Aishani Chatterjee
      1. Bootacular Baltimore
      2. Programming noticed lots of Fall themed events, but no trick or treating events
      3. Thought to partner with CSC to have a route where students can go around to get candy and also speak with community partners
      4. Want stickers and candy to incentivize
      5. Biggest ask is tote bags
      6. The idea is that students have to go to X number of community organizations and get “stamped” if they attend all of them. Thus, the incentive of tote bags if they go to every single community organization.
      7. Issac: 5 min moderated caucus
        1. Issac: guidelines specifically state that they cannot fund events that occur off campus
        2. Representative: Partnership with programming and CSC, have tried other avenues of fundraising
    4. Budget Reporting Act.docx - Finance Chair Peter Tarpley
      1. Make public where the money from finance committee goes
      2. Semesterly publication
      3. Sean created sample website
      4. RC: 5 min moderated caucus
        1. RC: how frequent is the publication
        2. RC: is the website going to be updated as changes are made, will all items be listed?
          1. Peter: no it will probably be the categories as seen on the website
        3. Shreemann: don’t focus too much on website details because that's not part of the bill
        4. Demarri: yield
        5. Cole: Why December 15th and April 15th
          1. Sean: can be altered
        6. Aishani: break down budget by type of org
        7. Demarri: clarifying that most decisions are up to discretion of the treasurer
        8. Jackson: maybe put in clause about date of publication being two weeks before elections (example)
        9. Cole: motion to refer to internal affairs, passes

Prospective Legislation & Announcements (5 min)

Adjournment (Estimated 9:00 PM)

Time-length and adjournment estimates are provided for the benefit of guests at Senate meetings. However, SGA meetings are always slated to extend until 9:00 PM and SGA members are expected to remain in the Senate chamber until official adjournment by motion, whether before or after the adjournment estimate.