University Daily Kansan, September 24, 1982
Page 7
Resignations, absenteeism plague Senate
By DON KNOX Staff Reporter
Of the $33 students elected to Student Senate last November, only 38 remain in office, according to Senate records. By next Tuesday, nine more may be elected.
Most have resigned their Senate seats or were removed from office because of absenteeism, Senate officials say.
But the exodus has long been a problem. Loren Busy, Hutchinson senior, said yesterday. And the former candidate for student body president said absenteeism continued to hamper Senate's effectiveness.
"ONE HAS to get the feeling that if senators don't take Student Senate seriously, why should the student body?" Busby said.
David Adkins, student body president, said that students identified as potential senators often were involved in other campus activities that hurt their Senate involvement.
"But in my mind," Adkins said, "there is no excuse for a student to run for a Senate seat and not follow on it."
ACCORDING to Senate recorces, 11 senators have resigned since they begin terms last November. Six others are still on office and one senator graduated.
The most recent senators to be removed — at Monday's meeting of the Student Senate Executive Committee — included Harry Mallin, journalism senator, and graduate senators Cole Gilbert and Peter Gray.
At the same meeting, three — David Hills, graduate senator; Linda Ford, graduate senator; and Sarah Holley, graduate senator — also submitted their resignations.
The most recent resignation came Tuesday, when Steve McMurry, special senator and former head of KU on Wheels, quit. McMurry, 27, was arrested last week on charges of stealing funds from the KU bus system.
NEXT TUESDAY, StudEx will hear appeals from senators suspended last week because of repeated absences from Senate meetings. And, if recent allegations were true, some of the nine senators suspended will be removed permanently.
"There is no doubt that some of the students are elected to Senate and either don't have the time for it or some frustrated with it," Addinsa said.
But Adkins said he would not support any proposal to decrease the size of the Senate — which was halved in 1981 because of rampant absenteeism.
"I DON'T TONDER size is the problem anymore," he said. "I think if you cut
Senate down to 12 or so members, then you still have difficulty with attracting the people that are too busy to do the job."
Busy, however, offered another reason for Senate's turnover.
"Most people, when they run for Student Senate, get elected there on a coalition," he said. "And they just don't work or commitment involved."
But Lisa Ashner, StudEx chairman, said that despite the turnover of Senators, attendance in Senate committees was improving. And the newer senators — senators who lost in last election — faced a new challenge to replace winners — often proved to be more active than their predecessors, she said.
"IT'S NOT SO much a problem when you think that we're replacing senators with students who are willing and want to work," she said.
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