This Summer’s student senators took on the task of revising the Student Body statutes.
The changes mostly updated the codes to bring them up to current standards and corrected past grammatical errors, said judiciary chairman Bronco Vuskovich, who co-sponsored these updates.
In the 100 codes, senators made the Senate statutes available upon request to each new senator instead of automatically. It saves paper, Vuskovich said.
The list of exclusionary offices in the executive branch, which are the heads of Senate’s various organizations, was updated to reflect current organizations.
The title of affairs director was scrapped and replaced with Action SG to reflect the group’s new name.
Groups like Gators Going Green, Gator Innovators and Student Honor Code were added.
The positions for supervisor of elections, assistant supervisor of elections and election commission members were also nixed. Vuskovich couldn’t be reached for comment.
Further changes to the election rules, in the 700 codes, included deleting several duties of the supervisor of elections. One said the supervisor must “ensure that all students are notified of the absentee ballot process, via at least two forms of direct online notification, at least two weeks prior to the deadline.”
“The Supervisor of Elections shall ensure that all voting systems are properly zeroed and tested in the week prior to the election. The zeroing and testing of the voting systems shall occur in the presence of the group listed in 717.3,” read another deleted section.
Senate attendance laws, chapters 323 and 324, were amended to reflect a more liberal policy on choosing constituency events, during which senators meet their constituents.
“It goes from a blanket where everybody has to do the same two events to a more targeted approach,” said rules and ethics chairman Anthony Sorrentino. “It’s moving toward an option where senators get to pick from a pool of potential constituency requirements.”
In the 500 codes, five Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences satellite schools were stricken from the list of approved representatives for distance campuses.
Chapter 621, regarding group seating, was deleted altogether.
Most of the updates were in the codes that guide finances.
The major change was to the definition of the student activity and service fee to include a broader section of minority groups that may not be disincluded.
“We changed the definition of the activity and service fee to match the Florida statute,” said Student Body Treasurer Elliot Grasso, who authored the bill.
Senate also allocated $988.50 to the Culinary Student Union for advertising and ingredients.
Servant’s House Ministries received $351.93 to fund kiddie pools and Facebook advertising.
The Gator Billiards club was funded $2,615 for table rental in Fall and Spring, as well as food.
[A version of this story ran on pages 1 - 4 on 7/31/2014 under the headline "Student Senate updates statutes, deletes positions"]
Drew Baker, a 20-year-old UF economics major, prepares to block a spike from 20-year-old aerospace engineer major Shanna Wyatt. The volleyball game was part of “Spike-it-with-Senate,” a charity volleyball tournament.
