At their first formal meeting this year, the SA Senate accepted a number of nominations for the finance committee but has not confirmed any of them as of yet.
The nominees will be questioned at next Monday's meeting and five of them will be confirmed. Nominees included some existing Senate members such as Bill Miller, a sophomore political science major, Aaron Burberry, a sophomore biochemistry major, and Rob Mercurio, a junior business administration major.
The point of new business that dominated the meeting was that of a proposal to increase the requirements for new clubs to be recognized as permanent, which was proposed by Senate Chair Viqar Hussain.
The existing requirements state that a temporary club must participate in two SA events, two community services, two fundraisers and two club events per semester. His proposal was to add two more events to that list, one with a club within the club's council and one with a club outside of its council.
The basis for the change was that it would form a network among the clubs and promote awareness as well as unity. He also said it would set new clubs up for possibly being Club of the Year.
After much debate it was concluded that this couldn't go into effect without including existing clubs when raising the event requirement. The issue was tabled until Monday's meeting where raising the requirement for all clubs will be discussed.
Supporters of the amendment said that the extra requirement would weed out "idle clubs" that do the bare minimum and are never heard from after that.
Mercurio suggested that the requirements remain the same and that clubs who go above and beyond the requirements be rewarded for doing so.
The council's head of the sports clubs pointed out that it would be too difficult for sports clubs to add extra events to their schedule because their events typically consist of practices and games. Also, he said, for many sports clubs, being a club of the year isn't as important as winning games and doing well on the field.
Hussain said he felt the Senate made good progress overall in their first meeting of the year.
"The resolutions got addressed," he said. "Before, we didn't even know who was nominated (for the finance committee)."
Photo: Courtesy of Matthew Messina, from the RMBERS' Instagram page
