Judiciary
Felix
- main job
- comprised of 5 justice
- we have two vacancies that we're trying to fill
- our main powers come from constitution
- final appellate body of all matters related to sga
- aryan guatam, katherine zhu
- applications for vacancies coming this week
- can make a recommendation next week, just as next week applications received
- flow goes lie this:
- send a writ of certiorari
- they function under rules of judiciary, analog to the sga bylaws
- determine if there is need for immediate action, or retroactive
- e.g. students have to do this, they can't do this, this decision would violate students rights, we need to top this
- then consult documents (interpret constitution, bylaws, etc, liker so constitutions
- issue binding decision establishing precedent to guide future sga actions; also how to remediate ethe situation (if necessary)
- this is FINAL. final adjudication on matters related to sga
- how are petitions are evaluated
- cannot be frivolous (i.e,. it just have affected you)
- causation ( action directly caused the harm)
- redressability (a ruling can fix the problemP
- exhaustion (other appeals were tried first)
- text: the senate or executive branch jay also request a non funding advisory…
katherine
- sga can send a writ, asking for opinion before something (e..g, is this constitutional or notP
- process
- receive query from sga
- interpret governing documents
- provide nonbinding guidance to SGA branches and affiliated organizations
- in the past we have cited advisory opinions, so not binding but can have an impact
- summary of actions of the judiciary
- binding opinions
- emergency injunctions & stays (stop and continue; pause lower-body decisions during appeals)
- Overturn & modify (reverse or adjust decisions by the CSE and other SGA bodies)
- set precedent (establish rules that CSE/SGA must follow going forward)
aryan
- internal accountability
- we make sure our decisions are discussed at length so no single justice controls outcomes
- absolute majority; ensures broad consensus
- recusals have been done, a member of the judiciary was not comfortable with ruling
- public written opinions; ensure all of our minutes, all of our decisions, thinking etc. are in our minutes are in minutes, publicly
- how do we work with cse
- we are the final appellate body for them
- anyone who has concerns with them would have to raise them to CSE first
- we review after them; we work as "supreme court"
- we may appeal results after that
- we have ability to make sure results were made well
- authority to determine whether CSE election is certified
- judiciary is responsible for appointing members to the CSE
questions?
jazz: any questions? if not, next thing. <next thing>
ceremony
to be sworn in is not necessary, but is preferred; does not have to happen; something we have been able to make happen, judiciary is able to all be here for, i will let them take it away
felix: ok, do we have any class senators that need to be sworn in? mamadou: <rises>
<the script>
felix: congratulations. do we have any academic senators?
boyi, rosane, mahima, [], []
<the script>
felix: congratulations. any rso senators?
cole, andrei: <rise>
<the script>
felix: congratulations. do we have any caucus senators?
nifemi, jazz, kayla
<the script>
felix: congratulations. do we have class programming council members? ok. um, anyone from executive?
sumi, sienna: <rise>
felix: congratulations. that's everyone? thank you guys for your time :)
jazz: thank you to our judiciary for being here today, and swearing in the members of sga. the only amendment to the agenda from your last seeing of it is the inclusion of the SG Judiciary
any motions?
shreeman: motion to amend agenda, move 2nd reading before 1st seconds: point of information: need to pass bill, people left last time, need absolute majority
jackson: motion; interrupted, continues, point of information: we have guests yo
<bla bla > jackson & demarri opposed shreeman: motion to withdraw; new motion to something idk seconds: passed, etc
jazz: executive reports
jason: we had jay games! saw some of you sumi: same stuff, questions about buddy talk to me honora: if you're not in a good place with attendance talk to me, if you can't find drive, also talk to me amy: we have in the ballpark allocated 270k, about halfway, which is good grace guan: no attachments jazzlyn: website is up to date, we have name cards for next week, it will have you rename your position, if you don't have your information, then talk to us. we have updated attendance, as you have seen, this was by exec, if you walked in late, you should see nora. anyway, that's it, no more updated, passing it to andrei:
andrei: i am senator of the arts. with cso we are trying to organize prospective org fair late september early november, will be meeting wich charles thursday, partly related to civic engagement, and i'm not sure how much of that will happen later, i am trying ot reach out to as many rsos as possible , primarily arts, i represent those technically, if there are ones that you want to represent, and you are not a senator, you are on committee of sustainability for example, and you think it is worthy of being discussed, then please email me before 9 pm, because i will be
kayla: i am hispanic/latinx heritage senator; current initiative is event october 12th 5-10, a performance, tabling, for
arjun: brief update; cultural rso; more consistent connection between sga and rsos, better way for them to ?? what do orgs need, also shared several … pso does not feel fully represented by sga. they were more comfortable with talking to mlc, made me rethink, looking toward shared calendar between mlc, …, also plan to speak with more multicultural rsos so, not to create an other organization for the sake of creating one, it's to develop more communication, understand the
multicultural leadership council
charles:
if you need to talk to me for whatever reason com see me
tekeya: had a medical episode, that is why she is not here today, not well, but getting better, will give more updates as they come
heard there was a comment from tekeya concerning the letter, don't want you to think that, whatever you will do with the newsletter, those who have seen email from provost about free speech, that is our stance. we are always in favor of speech. never that you can't speak to this person or administrator; you all like to talk to administrators all the time, we like to make sure that happens as quickly and efficiently as possible; the leed office cannot saying what it is you need to say; however you want to do the thing with the newsletter, this discussion must be made by you. this discussion does not stop to day, it will continue to go forward. not sure what she said, hope she didn't mean it that way
jazz: nonlegislative business. civic engagement chair, jackson
jackson: "SGA DISCUSSION on National Call to Action)"
hello will try to go as quickly as possible, lot's of information, hope you can get as much time back as possible i am civic engagement chair, we discussed the following documents last week at meeting. we wanted to refer to senate and discuss next steps.
hope you have read mcmahon's letter about higher-level education expression/communication. i want you to ask questions, is this important? and what should we do? you are not obligated, though, to give perspective. if you do decide it's important, what's next? mcmahon's letter asked multiple questions and actions for university presidents and admin. many of these are good, like tuition, free expression, intellectual pluralism, admissions. we should value these
points \6 and 7 though, us national interests, and benefit to americans, are clearly owned by the trump administration, an attack on immigrants and other groups; hopkins should see international students as integral; the committee believe this.
so why does it matter to us? an article int he baltimore banner says he thinks the document is good, but did not consult with faculty first ;"hopkins intends to release an official response to the call to action after consulting with the community members and stakeholders at the university." the university sent a poll during this meeting asking for feedback for students. this is good, but it's not what it needs to be. students don't have visibility in this process; we cannot advocate to ensure that a particular message ends ep coming from hopkins to the federal government. as sga, it is important that we advocate for a particular outcome, protecting the interests of students and faculty.
the article says faculty are happy about the general idea of free expression, but daniels did not confer with them first. hopkins will be much better if students play a part in this. nothing here is a claim against hopkins; regardless, the virtue of debate is herein supported. to the administrators…
honora: motion for 3 minute recess to read
passed
demarri: motion for moderated 10 min caucus
jackson: we're not just putting this on you; this will go on in the next couple weeks; the email is asking for very specific feedback for this. i think the main idea of what we should do is meet with them, make sure nothing about their opinion has changed, and figure out where our peers are. further, we should likely reach out to rsos most affected by this, i.e., lots of international students, political debate, we genuinely don't know, give your feelings,
nora: thanks for bringing this to our attention jackson and committee, i've spoken to maybe 5-6 committee, they're outraged by lack of input they got, hope we can work with them as sga and also as students, yeah, from the few things i've heard
paul: who would we send?
jazz: since civic engagement, i presume civic engagement, but good conversation for exec
andrei: we didn't really discuss that, it's an entire sga thing; i also want to add to frame this conversation through rsos, yes cultural rsos are affected if people are also interested in how research rsos will be affected, what about pursuing research that threaten "national" security; hopkins has pursued initiatives against its history, it hink it the job of the university to do this even when it's against the nation's happiness; our voice as undergraduates is still important
peter: i agree. good way to get rsos more involved on campus; would make sense, i saw october would be public release of draft, maybe there can be a forum with the senate, so there will be one place where lots of people can get feedback
jackson: these are great ideas, just for pauls's point, i don't see as just civic engagement, this is entire sga; hey i have this idea. should be able to meet and have ideas freely.
sophia: hi guys did you guys read it on the break? is "national security" going to be the top issue? first & second immigrants, affirmative action, etc, this is important to people in the room, so please read it, please encourage your friends to read it; talk to jackson or me, we will talk about it in more detail in private; doesn't make sense to speak for 6k, including grad students 40k
abraham: do we want to decide as a group what we want to say? individual speakers in the SGA may incorrectly represent all of SGA's opinion
Paul: is there a grad/faculty student association
jazz, shreeman, demarri; yes
jackson: if you look on the website you can find the other organizations, but the only thing that exists currently to unite different leadership groups is the student advisory council, i served for a while, the current conversation…. when this stuff happens, it's expected that we get no input; we are surprised by the forum at all. overloading credits had no student voice, for example. FA may have been discussed years ago, but not now. why don't we have wider, shared governments, where we get input from more
honora: it's important to think about timing; this forum is after faculty, newsletter, and sga said something
kai martin: can we do a survey of leaders, etc.
jazz: time is ended. no motions, 2nd reading time. thank you jackson
kevin: i would like to invite my cosponsors boyi and mahima to read with me.
kevin: we care about organizational sustainability; what we see a lot with prospective orgs (sometimes existing orgs) they don't have enough people that are actually interested in the org. this is very much a problem with prospective orgs, since they cannot use hopkins name in their promotional materials (these will be rejected); the leaders of the orgs must instead invite friends as founding members, though they are not committed. instead, we hope to avoid this by hosting an event allowing prospective orgs to find people.
we're asking for 74 ice creams total; hosting this in the general fashion as the typical SIF on the beach. for changes, i would like to thank demarri for formatting/date issue; thanks for that. based on committee of finance, we moved date from september 25th to october 7th, giving us more time to get people/rso on board and signed up.
andrei: i think the main concern beside timing from finance committee was just finding people before the event, luckily i think we have the name of over 200 who attended/wanted to be in prospective org discussions
jazz: any motions? ….. any motions to pass?
shreeman: motion to pass
second:
shreeman: clerpa
- didn't complete last meeting since not enough people
- properly determined 1 of each of black caucus, women
- have retained the aapi caucus; there were talks of adding lgbtqia and [] caucus senators. will use normal channels for that. also used to need 40, changed the
- honora: motion to amend bylaws
- …
- demarri: poi is this bylaws or this bill
- shreemann: this bill
- second: []
- …
- shreemann: oh nora that's a different bill not this one
- passed
- null
shreemann: accountability act
- making ppl aware if a senator has done… nothing
- motion to amend
cole: 5min q&a 1 nin second: demarri aye: passed
cole: 4.3.3.1.2: if member of sga exceeds maximum number of excuised absences
shreeman: more flexibility, more reasonable, that was the idea
peter: yeah ia gree with shreeman, more guardrails
jackson: experiment; want to get rid
demarri: agree, excused absences are different want to talk to them
[someone]: wouldn't the same thing apply to unexcused absences
shreemann: no not really, it's ridiculous, since you would have not talked to people
mahima: there's vagueness in whether determined to be partial
shreemann: idea behind that is, if you're 5 min late to 2 hr meeting doesn't matter, but it does matter if you're 5 minutes late to a 10 minute meeting, this is a problem; no way to enumerate every case
aarshi: i had my hand up then put it down; my question was answered
jazz: anyone else? 1 min 10 sec
mahima: can we have a short list of always reasonable excused absences
shreeman: these exists in the bill
nora: might want to keep it, emergency that lasts a while
shreemann; yeah
emnet: understand spirit, but impeachment is strong
shreemann: for context there have been no impeachments
jazz: time up, motion?
cole: motion to pass
second: demarri, peter?
aye na
passed
emin soguktas: phi delta theta's crab fest
asking for same amount as last year; for the crabs we will be provided; nota sking for sga to cover entire cost of the crabs; rest covered by our brotherhood; hoping for financial support; all proceeds go toward live liuke foundation; donates money for raising awarenessa bout als, also goes to the packard center at hopkins, this is hopkins' als research center
jazz: any motions
aarshi: motion to pass
aarshi: motion to discharge
jackson: robert rules, q&a
we shouldn't be in the habit of passing so quickly
isaac: $25/ticket 600, projection much higher
emin: [idk]
shreeman: can remove like $xx.xx
paul: would be more comfortable seeing it go to finance
peter: i do think this bill should be discharged; do want to support charity, but main purpose is to
veda: i think this is a good event, my only question is, similar amount of crabs from this to last year?
emin: no we decreased
veda: so did you take that into account emin: we had 12 bushels left over last time, we say all you can eat, so we can't change number; we want
Paul: that's what i remember worring about, not having enough left
emin: the bushels we have left over we give to people who help
demarri: who motioned to pass and discharge?
shremann: motion to refer to finance
cole: second
aye:
charlotte: pi beta phi maryland gamma
planning to have 5k around campus on november 14th,
rain date: november 15th, 2026
decker quad
similar route to homewood holiday 5k
day-of schedule
7am: setup
9:15 am - 10am: check-in
10 - 12 p: race time & awards 12 pm - 2pm: cleanup
(something affiliated promote educational equality?)
everything legally and logistically is ready to go,
have (partnerships?) with places, among them is jhu federal credit union.
general admission $40
hopkins & greek affiliate discount codes: $17-20
- discount codes to represent founding year
financial estimates: on bill it is written differently, wanted to give quick update; administration-wise, our headquarters is also getting involved, what's missing really from this event, for those who have run in 5ks, t-shirts are an incentive/trophy of sorts, hoping this incentivises
this is what we need for the funding for tshirts, we'll be able to lower student pricing to 18.76, incentivizing student volunteers
we also need water station supplies for the
this is a mockup of the t-shirt, where it's at
we worked with a vendor to get the lowest per-unit price
we'd be hpapy to put sga as sponsor
Why should SGA support us? we want to help promote student wellbeing and mental health through a fun and energizing event; foster community; hoping to be able to provide shirts to volunteers; if sga covers t[shirt funding sand some event cost 100% of proceeds from the 5k registration fees will be read > lead > …..
jazz: any motions
shreeman: motion refer to finance
cole: second aye: nay: abstian: passed
sophia: trick or treat funding bill
for 2 ppl whoa re students, not
great opportunity: join with center for social concern, have a route which allows studenst to hear from speakers who are involved; teh premise of whate we're asking for is a) we'd like stickers and candy to give out to students; will invite students to come b) asking for tote bags, the largest cost. for the questions of why these bags, the premise is that hte students go to whatever set X of places, teh students only get a tote bag if they get all the stamps; this prevents students from leaving or not going to the places, where all these groups have prepared; worked with programming council to lower the price as much as possible.
jazz: any motions
isaac : motion for 5 minute moderated caucus
demarri: second
passed
isaac: .. i think if the event is of campus, the event can't be funded
person: parter with sga programming, sga is inviting these groups to do programming/tabling, want students to be able to be off campus; the money is not going to these external organizations
other person: on campus includes stuff to social center to concern
isaac: you also said partnership with programming
person: they do have their own budget, they don't have enough for the tote bags, critical part of the event; ….
peter: just want to say, for rso's, we avoid funding going off campus, but this is near campus, csc, fi the senate passes as a whole, we can often go past some of the restriction if the entire senate passes it, i will be sure to mention to crystal if passed to finance
shreemann: nitpicky stuff should be left to finance. also programming council is different from an rso
veda: if doesn't get passed, have you seen if csc for example are able to provide totebags?
person: i've spoken to [], willow goode, other organizations under the csc, they do not have enough money to be able to subsidize them. programming has so many events they can only do current
person 2
sophia: [something]
nora: we spent a few thousand on crabs
jazz: any motions
[someone] : motion to refer to finance
second:
aye: [something]
…
peter: on quick note on last, finance obviously has lots of information, but senators can also have say
sean: not a lot of public information, this bill adds that treasurer
aarshi: moderated caucus
second: demarri
aye:
aarshi: so just semesterly or what
sean: eyah, not too much for the treasurer, been working on amy with this
aarshi: itemizing everything for every club, i guess that would be too much for each of this club
sean: [something]
shreemann: internal affairs wise, the way the bill is written, doesn't require sean's website
demarri: i forgot
cole: dates reported, aprtil 15th, are those just pick
aishani: maybe break it down by type of org
demarri: up to secretary to choose what counts as what
jackson: to cole's idea, couldn't you make it before elections? " this will be done 2 days before election"
sean: maybe, id on't want to put in some super hard limitand it burdens finance
peter: i think that' makes sense though,
jackson: i almsot wonder if april 15 is putting too much
peter: [something]
jackson: that would be past the reading… past finals just want to make sure you're not putting too much on yourself
peter: it's mostly for treasurer amy, i mean you can ask her, and can be discussed in ia
sean: wanted to say yes
cole: motion to refer to internal affairs
second: [something]
referred to ia
jazz: we will skip cohort time today, very large gbm today
shreemann: motion to adjourn
passed
….
note to readers: i may be inclined to make a bill about recording senate meetings ts getting ridiculous