"SUNY Assembly holds elections, debates GPA standards for office"

Elections and heated debates were the focus of the last SUNY Assembly conference for the school year, held from April 13 to April 16 at the Marx Hotel in Syracuse.

Two hundred and fifty students were in attendance, representing 53 out of the 64 schools in the SUNY system, including UB's SUNY executive committee members and delegates Elliot Sherman, Christopher Mendoza, Melody Mercedes and Student Association President Viqar Hussain, as well as Rohan Desusa and Latreece Seneca, who will be delegates for the upcoming school year.

One of the main topics of discussion included the possibility for a vote made by the executive committee supporting the raising of GPA requirements to run for SUNY Assembly positions.

"Currently in SUNY it's 2.0 for you to run for office and it does not state what you must maintain while in office," said Mercedes, secretary of the body's executive committee. "We pushed to change it to 2.5 for you to run and 2.25 to stay in office."

Several representatives were against the proposal, claiming that only SUNY can dictate the level that a student should be at and that the increase would constrict who would be able to run for SUNY Assembly.

Others argued that that requiring a higher GPA would ensure that more academically responsible students would be elected to office.

"Two past presidents have had to resign due to academic ineligibility. If you can't balance your academics then you shouldn't be on something like the state assembly," Sherman said. "We are all students first before we are student assembly members, that's our first priority."

Sherman also believes that academically sound students make for a more efficient assembly.

"You have 400,000 students relying on the student assembly to represent them and when you have to start over in the middle of the year because you have a new e-board it's kind of counterproductive," he said.

Mercedes agrees that higher GPAs equip assembly members to be better representatives of SUNY.

"We believe if you take on the workload it will affect your GPA," Mercedes said. "When your GPA drops it hurts you and the organization that you have to resign your position from."

Also discussed at the conference were lawsuits between SUNY Albany and two of its student association clubs regarding how clubs are allowed to distribute money.

According to Mercedes, the clubs followed SUNY guidelines, which state that a good way to fund clubs is though membership. After a court hearing and appeal in which judges disagreed the clubs are going back to trial.

"Now we're looking at how we're going to handle that and advise student governments because this is something that everyone could potentially deal with," Mercedes said.

Buffalo State College's suggested changing referendum voting from every two years to every four years. The referendum is a vote over whether student activities fees should be mandatory or voluntary.

"If student activities fees became voluntary it would leave the student association with a very small budget and student activities around campus would disappear," Sherman said. "Buff State wanted to push legislation to make the referendum every four years due to the fact that every two years is very costly and a waste of resources and time."

The biggest discussion at the conference was the election of the new executive committee. Don Boyce of SUNY Albany was elected president, Melody Mecrecdes was elected vice president, Jeff Trapp of SUNYIT was elected treasurer and Jeremy Smelski of Cayuga Community College was elected secretary. Elliot Sherman was elected to the executive committee, a position he will hold even though he was not reelected by UB as a delegate for next year. He will represent UB, Binghamton University, SUNY Albany and SUNY Stony Brook and vote on their behalf at monthly executive committee meetings. Razy Kased - currently an undergrad who will be a UB grad student next year - was elected as a graduate representative parallel to Sherman on the committee.

"It's an exciting step for UB because the graduate program was in a shambles and it's stepping up," Sherman said.

Mercedes mentioned that with UB at three seats in the executive committee, this is the first year the committee isn't dominated by SUNY Albany.

UB was also recognized with two certificates, one for host of the year for the September SUNY Assembly Conference and another for community service event of the year for UB Gettin' Dirty.