Student Senate began their meeting Tuesday night by looking for a way to pay tribute to English professor Graham Lewis who died Tuesday.

A resolution passed the Student Senate unanimously to find a way to pay respects to the Eastern professor.

Michelle Martin, student liaison to the Faculty Senate, talked about the forum of elected officials, which will take place Oct. 30 from 6 to 7 p.m. in the Charleston/Mattoon Room of the Martin Luther King, Jr. University Union.

State Representative Chapin Rose, Coles County Sheriff Darrell Cox, Coles County Coroner Michael Nichols, former Charleston Mayor Roscoe Cougill, county board chair Jan Eads, State’s Attorney Steve Ferguson, Coles County Clerk Sue Rennels and city council member Larry Rennels will be at the meeting.

“It is to inform students on who is running other than in the presidential elections,” said Murphy. “We did not get the chance to organize a debate and no one who is running against the speakers will be present, but it will get students to get to know members in the community.”

However, all the speakers are not running for office.

Furthermore, Eric Wilber, student executive vice president, said there were concerns about campaigning, but it would be made sure that nothing about the speakers’ agendas would be brought up at the forum.

In other business, Wilber and Student Body President Levi Bulgar are looking into having the next Illinois Board of Higher Education Student Advisory Committee at Eastern, which would take place at the end of January or early February.

Bulgar said reservations for rooms, catering, nightlife activities and possible guest speakers would need to be addressed for visiting students.

Ryan Kerch, student vice president for student affairs, is looking into funds to bring back the Student Savings Club program.

Patrick Moriarty, of Collegiate Services, presented to Student Senate last week about starting the program up again at Easten. The program was introduced at Eastern in 1994, and it did well for a few years.

However, it eventually died out.

Also, a proposal to only propose bylaw changes only during the last four weeks of the semester was pulled from the agenda after debate over whether it was the best way to deal with the so many bylaws have been brought up lately.

Student Senate member Jeff Melanson said the reason he brought forth the bylaw change proposal is because there have been so many bylaws lately.

He went on to say there are usually 12-15 bylaws a semester instead of 12-15 over one week.

“This is a light bulb for a bigger problem,” Bulgar said. “Please get a group together and get the bylaw thing figured out because I am sick of so many of these bylaws coming up every week.”

A proposed bylaw change to require four office hours a week was changed to four service hours and Student Senate Speaker Isaac Sandidge said that he, along with the other signers, took the advice from last week to mold this proposal.

However, not all of the four hours have to be service hours.

Four hours could be served in the office. At least two of these hours must be office hours, though. It would be up to a senator’s discretion.

“The way the hours were written down outside of the office would be based on the honors system,” Sandidge said.

This discussion was tabled for next week’s meeting.

Heather Holm can be reached at 581-7942 or haholm@eiu.edu.

Student Government President Levi Bulgar speaks to the senate about going over their constitution at Wednesday night’s meeting. (Erin Matheny/The Daily Eastern News)

(more…)