At the final meeting of this year’s Duke Student Government Senate Wednesday night, representatives again tackled one of the year’s most divisive internal issues: chartering and recognizing student organizations.
The Senate fielded complaints from members of the Student Organization Financial Committee and other senators, most of whom criticized DSG’s arguably weak oversight mechanism for monitoring club spending. DSG has the authority to recognize and fund any student organization that SOFC screens and presents.
The Senate split Wednesday over approval of a charter for the Vietnamese Students Association; opponents of the organization cited the recent explosion of clubs as a primary reason to vote against it.
Senator Joe Fore, a sophomore and incoming vice president of academic affairs, spearheaded the debate to deny VSA a charter, saying that DSG had approved a legion of similar organizations in recent weeks.
“Where is this going to go?” Fore said. “Are we going to have a Wyoming Students Association if a bunch of students from Wyoming want to form a group?”
Several senators vehemently reacted to Fore’s statement, saying that the VSA will fill a niche not satisfactorily provided by the Asian Students Association. Until oversight improves and organizations like ASA are held accountable to provide programming for every subgroup, senators said, DSG has a responsibility to approve smaller cultural groups.
The VSA charter was ultimately approved unanimously, along with several other groups. The issue of codifying organization approval will face next year’s DSG executive board and the new SOFC committee.
In other business:
By-laws amending SOFC budgeting and auditing passed unanimously, as did an amendment augmenting the role of the Community Interaction committee.
The senate also held elections Wednesday night for the 2005-2006 cabinet. President-elect Jesse Longoria, a junior, gained approval for all of his appointed members. The new chief of staff is junior Russ Ferguson, joining president pro tempore sophomore George Fleming, chief justice junior Erica Stalnecker, technology director junior Ajay Kori, head line monitor junior Lauren Troyer, attorney general junior Bryce Walker and executive secretary sophomore Lauren Garson.
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