This week

Senator Kwon Yearby presented a new bill concerning representation from diversity groups on campus. The bill proposed that two members of each of the seven diversity groups on campus be present during ASCSU Senate meetings.

“We do want diversity and we want to get other areas of campus involved,” Yearby said. “We would be very unified.”

Each representative will have a voice in the senate but will not retain voting rights. However, if the representatives would like to gain voting rights, they could run for a place on senate under their representative colleges.

“We created it as a stepping stone,” Senator Taylor Watson said.

A previous diversity bill presented earlier this year called for fourteen seats to be added to senate from the diversity groups. It was postponed indefinitely. The new bill was voted to be passed to external affairs to receive further viewing and be taken through to the next step.

Last week

Two members of ASCSU Student Senate were automatically resigned in the senate meeting.

The parliamentarian, Emily Malin, had not shown up to meetings for the last four weeks.

“Senator Malin has been absent four times, and I recommend Evan Mackes moves into that seat,” Yearby said. “She is obviously not fulfilling her duties to senate.”

Evan Mackes is a Fort Collins native who said he is excited for the opportunity the job has given him. His role change from senator to parliamentarian takes away his individual voting rights but gains him the responsibility to ensure the ASCSU Senate is functioning properly as a whole.

“CSU has always been the place I wanted to go to for college. I want to make CSU better because I love it so much,” Mackes said.

Parliamentarian is a paid position in the Student Senate. The role, According to ASCSU diversity and retention officer, Kohl Webb, is to have an official who is an expert in Senate’s rules who will ensure that senate is running efficiently.

Webb said that the absence of Parliamentarian was not an issue because Vice President, Andrew Olson, had been filling in for the the position in Malin’s absence.

“It gets harder for senators to show up at the end of the semester because everyone freaks out about grades,” Webb said.

Malin, a senior mechanical engineering major, said she resigned because her school priorities conflicted with her duties on Senate.

“I forgot to send in my resignation,” Malin said. “My group decided that we needed to do our senior projects [during meetings], so I could never make it.”

Emily Rutter was also resigned due to the fact that she had been absent for a majority of meetings. According to Yearby, she had been chasing a seat for an FFA national office position and neglected her seat on senate.

According to Webb, the loss of Malin and Rutter does not cause a greater numbers problem due to the fact that Senate has been growing. Webb stated that there has been an increase from 14 to about 19 senators over the last month.

“We are all very focused on the morale and even the numbers of our group,” Yearby said. “We definitely have the right people in there — dedicated people.”

Collegian ASCSU Beat Reporter Stephanie Mason can be reached at news@collegian.com.