Only eight voting members attended Tuesday night’s rescheduled Student Association meeting, which prevented the assembly from making quorum.

Quorum requires the attendance of half the assembly plus one. With 20 total voting members, SA needed 11 to attend Tuesday’s meeting. Quorum is required to present bills to the assembly for a vote.

The SA was able to hold brief, informal discussions for about 15 minutes. Had there been any bills on the agenda, it could not have voted on them without meeting quorum. But most of the SA’s work is done outside of the meeting, said SA President Ryan Kelly.

The meeting wouldn’t have been very different if quorum had been met, said Jessica Oster, co-director of SA public relations.

The meeting was rescheduled from Monday night because of the men’s home basketball game against Georgetown University. The SA Cabinet was concerned few assembly and student body members would attend if the meeting was held Monday – as originally scheduled.

The game was a big event for the university, Kelly said.

‘If we want to be the SA, we need to be where the students are,’ he said.

Kelly sent e-mails to members on the association’s listserv to determine the best day to reschedule the meeting, he said. Only half of those who received the e-mail responded, and Tuesday was chosen based on those replies.

Kelly thanked the assembly members who attended Tuesday for coming and apologized for the turnout.

‘Talk to fellow assembly members,’ he said. ‘Ask them why they weren’t here.’

All SA members know about and are required to attend the regular Monday meetings. But special meetings – like Tuesday’s – are a different story.

‘Unfortunately, we can enforce attendance at special meetings,’ Oster said. ‘We tried our best to find a time that would work.’

‘Historically, in the past, when we moved a meeting, quorum was not met,’ Kelly said. ‘All our members are very busy people.’

A Tuesday meeting did not meet quorum Feb. 21, 2006, after it had been rescheduled because of a men’s home basketball game against West Virginia.

During the brief discussion, Kelly reminded the assembly of the Syracuse Common Council meeting Thursday. The council will discuss a proposal to reduce the number of non-related people who can sign off-campus housing leases from five to three.

Kelly said he sent an e-mail to more than 400 students, asking them to attend the meeting. After the meeting, a special bus will take students to both the O.A.R. concert and main campus, he said.

Joe Wieder, chairman of the Committee on Academic Affairs, reported on the progress of an SA resolution to accommodate students with disabilities.

The resolution recommends that all SU faculty include instructions in their syllabuses for students who have special needs. It was co-authored with the SU Office of Disability Services.

Wieder read from an e-mail by Vice Chancellor Eric Spina, who supported the resolution. Spina will include the SA’s recommendation in his annual letter to the university faculty, Wieder said.

The next SA meeting will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Monday in Maxwell Auditorium.

Published on March 5, 2007 at 12:00 pm