The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate voted on Sunday to repeal its Spring initiative to hold mandatory meetings for leaders of TCU-funded organizations and penalize groups that do not attend. Instead, the Senate plans to work with campus leaders to create new "leadership and community-building seminars" in hopes of promoting more unity within the TCU.
Citing growing dissatisfaction among student groups with the meetings and a pending constitutional referendum to repeal unpopular measures, Senate President David Moon initiated the move to repeal the mandatory attendance requirement and the punitive punishments.
Several student organizations found the meetings to be of little use, according to Senate Vice President Eric Greenberg. Clubs like the Strategic Gaming Society with very small budgets claim to be self-contained and do not see any benefits to the "luncheon" style meetings.
"I felt that the level of success of the meetings was not what we expected or hoped for," said Greenberg, who co-coordinated the gatherings last year.
The Senate did not abolish TCU meetings altogether, but, in two separate motions, stripped them of all authority. In the first vote the body overturned its decision to make the meetings mandatory. The motion passed with an fairly contentious 18-7-1 vote. Once they decided to deregulate the meetings, senators voted unanimously to rescind the punitive measures.
A coalition of the new University College of Citizenship and Public Service (UCCPS), the Office of Student Activities, and the TCU Senate will now work to find other ways of developing communications within the TCU.
The Senate decided against unilaterally determining the policy for the coalition, particularly because "UCCPS and the Office of Student Activities were much further in the [effort's] planning process than we were," Greenberg said. Regardless of their format, future meetings will most likely reflect many of the original TCU community meetings.
"[We] are currently working on assembling a set of meetings, almost exactly in structure to last year's Leadership Alliance meetings. The meetings will be skill-building and community-building leadership workshops, with invitations going out to one member of each student organization," Moon said. The coalition is currently working on a leadership breakfast scheduled for Oct. 25.
This year, campus leaders seem less bothered by the new community-building and leadership plans.
"The UCCPS definitely has things that student leaders can benefit from," said Sam Dangremond, the co-president of the Tufts Republicans. "I plan to attend. But, I would only do that if it's an open invitation. For me to be mandated to do so because I'm a president is ridiculous."
The "TCU Meetings" grew out of former Senate President Larry Harris's Leadership Alliance initiative. After several disappointing meetings, Lincoln Filene Center associate James Weinberg, who co-ran the alliance with the Senate, proposed that the seminars would be more successful if the Senate made them mandatory. The Senate consented, renaming them TCU Meetings, and voted to have the Allocations Board (ALBO) write a bylaw making attendance mandatory.
According to Senate Treasurer Michele Shelton, ALBO did just that, specifying that a club "could face Treasury disciplinary proceedings," including defunding, if it failed to attend half the mandatory meetings each semester.
