The Students’ Association spent time bonding on Wednesday while over three-fourths of the congressional body hasn’t met the required office hours and two members have already resigned.
The Williams Performing Arts Center no longer has a representative in congress and students living off campus are down one representative. SA executive president Connor Best, senior political science major from Sacramento, Calif., said Jeremy Seal, the off-campus representative, resigned recently, but Marc Guiterrez, the WPAC Representative, resigned much earlier in the year.
“It wasn’t so much resigning,” Best said. “It didn’t seem like there was a need.”
Best said neither of the former members attended the SA retreat and he didn’t feel the need to make them verbally resign before congress, a practice traditionally exercised. Both former members followed the Students’ Association constitutional guidelines by submitted their resignations to the president in writing.
Best said members would be discouraged from making formal resignations if they had to stand before congress, yet there was no other form of communication to inform other members of congress about the transition. Most members of congress, including some cabinet officers, didn’t know about the resignations.
Best said he didn’t know of a good way to communicate resignations to SA members. However, he said he would look into sending an email through the departmental secretary to the students in any of the six majors offered in the WPAC who no longer have representation.
Although Best discourages appointments to congressional positions in the middle of the semester, any student interested in joining SA could be nominated by the executive president. the A student could fill the seat with the support of two-thirds of congress,.
And more seats could open. Only nine members of the 38-seat congress have finished their first month of hours. Eleven members of congress have not begun to fulfill those duties.
Members become eligible for impeachment after missing four congress meetings, four months of office hours, or any combination thereof, said Rebecca Dial, chief development officer and junior political science and finance major from Lexington, S.C. All class officers are required to complete four hours of office work per four weeks, and all representatives are required to complete two hours.