The first official Student Senate meeting of the semester will be in the Arcola/Tuscola room of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union at 7 p.m. and they will start the meeting by swearing in two new senators before proceeding to the start of the Speaker election.

The two new senators being sworn in tomorrow are Keith Kerrigan and Ben Drake.

After getting sworn in they will officially be on the Senate and will be able to take action, start voting and participate in the meetings.

Student Senator Seth Yeakel will be the only Senator running for the speaker election. 

The Speaker election will be broken down into two parts: the first part will be nominations and getting familiar with the candidates. The second part will be the senators voting on who they believe will be the best Speaker.

At Wednesday’s meeting, the Student Senate will fulfill the first part and the Feb. 5 meeting will be the vote.

The main focus for the first official Student Senate meeting will be to focus on getting on the same page for goals and ideas that everyone has to bring to the table this semester.

“Our main goals for this semester is to continue to promote recruitment and outreach both within and outside of our organization, focus on mental health as a continued priority and continue to support inclusivity efforts as far as African American heritage month, women’s heritage month and all the different other aspects that’ll be happening on campus,” Student Body President Carson Gordon said.

They are also looking to get all of their positions aligned by getting the senators their committee placements.

Committee chair positions will be announced at the meeting as well. 

They are still in the process of recruiting to get 13 more seats filled.

“Recruiting is going well,” Gordon said. “We’re at quorum, but we’re continuing to accept new appointments, so we’ll continue to add a few new senators but we’re in a good position.”

An application for student senators can be found online on the Senate’s website under “applications.”

A note on the Senate’s website encourages students to attend weekly Senate meetings and introduce themselves to the Senate and to speak to the Speaker of the Senate about becoming a senator.

Jelan Buchanan can be reached at 581-2812 or at jjbuchanan@eiu.edu