Absences due to scheduling conflicts and sickness marred the Student Government Assembly (SGA) meeting Monday and present members hesitated in approving a large expenditure.
Seven of the 13 voting SGA officials must be present for a meeting to take place and voting to occur.
The late arrival of an SGA member at 3:07 p.m. established quorum and allowed the meeting to commence until 4:31 p.m., when the departure of another voting representative dropped the number of present officers below the threshold.
“We do have a duty to our students regardless of who’s here,” said Joshua Pinaula in a public comment, who stressed the importance of continuing the meeting despite the sparse attendance.
“It’s unfortunate if someone’s not able to come during the set meeting time but we also have to do business with or without them,” Pinaula said. “We represent 20,000 students and they can’t wait on the little things we have in our lives.”
Vice President of Sustainability Shaelin Koberle-Satt initiated discussion on a motion to approve the purchase of a $6000 inflatable movie screen for SGA use on the Santa Rosa Campus.
“The fact that we don’t have a durable, nice screen for outdoor use is really crazy to me,” Koberle-Satt said.
She and other supporters said the screen would pay for itself after six uses due to the fact that the SGA and clubs currently rent a screen for $1000 each time an organization shows a movie outside on campus.
After a long debate, SGA voted against a motion to vote on the purchase at that time.
Vice President of Student Life Dori Elder initiated discussion on problems manning the new SGA-run food bank on Wednesdays. The assembly debated hiring student ambassadors, attracting volunteers and deferring to clubs in order to keep the Wednesday food pantry manned.
“There should be an SGA representative at that table every week because that’s what we voted on and that’s what we said was going to happen,” Elder said.
Elder also referred to the fact that few members of the body have experience in student government.
“This goes back to us being a very young student government,” She said.
SGA also passed a motion to apportion $3000 in funds to the Student Life Committee to hire student employees, and Vice President of Advocacy Alexia Carrillo announced the enrollment period for undocumented-student scholarships will be from Oct. 10-27.
