Arguments relating to the Religious Funding Exemption Bill resurfaced as Student Senate passed seven bills unanimously at its Wednesday meeting.
Amid outbursts of profanity, senators debated to indefinitely suspend a resolution that was introduced in support of continued funding for the GLBT Resource Center. Before the resolution was debated, senators voted down a motion to censor Chris Woolsey, the original bill author of The Religious Funding Bill. The GLBT Resource Center Support Resolution was suspended indefinitely by voice vote.
The resolution vote followed a unanimous vote to not override Student Body President John Claybrook’s veto of the Religious Funding Exemption Bill.
Student senator Travis Walters said the passage of The GLBT Resource Center Support Resolution would reflect poorly on the past session and the rejection of the resolution would give room for Senate to be perceived as a discriminatory body again.
“I’m going to go back to my dead horse and beat it more,” Walters said. “By voting on [the resolution], either way, it’s going to say something about the 65th Senate, and we don’t want to back ourselves into a corner.”
Despite student senator Thomas McNutt’s denial of willfully misleading students through the bill and his request to let the issues die in open forum, student senator Robbie Cimmino said the motion to censor Woolsey for the remainder of the meeting was a matter of upholding the Aggie honor code.
“I believe that it is important for this body to have a discussion about honesty and the consequences of misleading,” Cimmino said. “As a representative body I think it’s really important for us to not tolerate those kinds of things when they happen.”
The motion to censor received 10 votes, including a vote from Woolsey for his own censorship, falling shy of the necessary one-fifth votes.
Other business voted on included, The SGA Acceptance and Anti-Discrimination Act, which passed after the portion of the bill that advocated for anyone to be accepted into SGA committees was removed. Another amendment from Senate Speaker Scott Bowen was added to make committees submit application processes in writing before they start the process of recruiting.
Additionally, Student Body President John Claybrook presented the Aggie Transfer Student Leadership and Outreach Committee Creation Act, a piece of legislation to create an executive committee with a year-long sunset clause for the purpose of creating a committee to help integrate transfer students into SGA committee organizations.