In their second meeting this semester, the Tufts Community Union Senate completed a number of important administrative tasks, including interviewing candidates for trustee representatives, updating the bylaws in regards to senator attendance and announcing approval for the TCU Senate Tuition Transparency Project.
The Senate first heard from senior Julian Kelly, juniors Lugin Afifi and Seray Ajei, and sophomores Tiara Senchakravorty and Jonathan Pinelli for the trustee representative positions.
Trustee representatives are non-voting members of the Senate and are required to leave during closed session voting. Each representative serves on one of four committees: University Advancement, Academic Affairs, Administration and Finance — which is on pause for this year — or Student Affairs, a subgroup of Academic Affairs. Student Affairs is the only committee with a voting trustee representative.
The TCU maintains a policy stating that trustee representatives must sit in on at least half of the TCU Senate meetings, with requirements to attend Senate meetings before and after they meet with the Board of Trustees to share information from these board meetings.
Following a discussion of the potential candidates, the Senate conducted online voting for the three available positions. Decisions are set to be released on Sept. 15.
The executive board of the TCU Senate then introduced the proposed updated Senate attendance policy, utilizing a percentage-based attendance requirement. Senators are now required to attend at least 85% of all meetings they have scheduled. Absences are not distinguished between excused and unexcused, and violations of this policy are met with automatic suspension if more than 15% of meetings are missed.
Senators have a week to look over and sign their approval on the new attendance policy.
TCU President Dhruv Sampat explained that the percentage for attendance is aimed to create a more even threshold for senators who are part of multiple committees and thus have more meetings to attend.
Sampat also cited issues with low attendance interfering with Senate projects, noting one particular instance from his first year as treasurer.
“There was a very sticky situation where a group of 15 individuals had to fly out for a conference that we were funding and were waiting on our yes or no,” he said. “We didn’t have enough people in the room to actually vote on it.”
Sampat added, “We’re dealing with high stakes here. If we don’t show up, unfortunately, it has real impacts to people down the line that depend on us and depend on the decisions that we make.”
Suspended senators will have a discussion with the executive board of the TCU Senate. The board will converse with the senator in question to determine plans for reinstatement or a permanent expulsion from the Senate.
TCU Senator Gracie Felsenthal, a sophomore, raised concerns about the new attendance policy. These included previous commitments to other organizations, personal absences due to illness or travel and enforcement of the attendance policy.
Sampat addressed the concerns by stating that TCU senators should feel free to contact the executive board if they were worried about attendance, and that the 15% absence cap was designed to be low enough to not affect most senators.
“The idea is that we never reach the point of suspension,” he said. “We’ve calculated the numbers; you will have plenty of leeway.”
Felsenthal additionally asked about the weight of attendance against the amount of projects that senators complete. She pointed out that the number of meetings a senator attends does not correlate with their productivity — for example, how many projects they lead.
“I’m thinking that attendance isn’t always representative of someone’s commitment to a club,” Felsenthal said.
Two TCU senators also noted potential scheduling conflicts for student athletes, whose prior commitments might impact their ability to follow the new policy.
TCU Senator Gunnar Ivarsson asked if the Tufts Community Union Judiciary committee would be involved in enforcing the attendance policy. Sampat explained that the TCU Judiciary would only be involved for appeals or overturns of suspensions or rules.
“[TCU Judiciary] comes in to hold us in check, but they’re not involved in the enforcing of [TCU Senate’s] day-to-day objectives,” Sampat said.
Update: Jonathan Pinelli was selected to be the Trustee Representative for University Advancement, Seray Ajey was selected to be the Trustee Representative for Student Affairs and Lugin Afifi was selected to be the Trustee Representative for Academic Affairs. They were each assigned to their top committee preference after receiving the most votes from the full Senate body. This update was made on Sep. 16.
