Senators will vote at tonight’s Associated Student Government meeting on a bill to lobby for better cell phone service on and off campus. The Senate is also waiting on student input in three open forums before potentially amending the ASG Constitution.
The cell phone bill calls for ASG to create a poll on HereAndNow to determine the popularity and signal strengths of different service providers on- and off-campus. The results of the poll will go to Northwestern administrators to lobby them to get more cell phone towers in needed areas, said Weinberg freshman Matt Bogusz, the bill’s author.
Bogusz said he wrote the bill after seven students were attacked while walking on and off campus during Fall Quarter. When the bill was heard at last week’s Senate meeting, Bogusz said working cell phones are students’ first line of defense if they ever feel they are in danger.
“I hope the Senate acts in the best interest of students on campus,” he said.
ASG will only vote on the cell phone bill tonight. No new bills are scheduled to be heard.
A proposed amendment to ASG’s constitution would prohibit further constitutional amendments without a two-thirds vote from the Senate and a majority vote from at least 500 undergraduates within the student body. The Senate won’t vote on the amendment for at least three weeks, pending the results of up to three open forums allowing students to voice their views, said Communication senior Dan Broadwell, speaker of the Senate.
Currently, a two-thirds vote from the Senate is needed to ratify an amendment.
The proposed amendment states that the Senate “continues to struggle with serious issues of unaccountability. Moreover, undergraduate students of Northwestern University deserve a say in all changes to the constitution of their student government.”
The first open forum was held Tuesday night during ASG’s weekly Rules Committee meeting in Norris University Center. Aside from Rules Committee members, no students attended.
Information about the open forum was sent to the ASG listserv, with the intent that senators would forward it to their constituents.
Typically there is a waiting period of four weeks and only two open forum meetings for proposed constitutional amendments. As speaker of the Senate, Broadwell said he wanted to change the procedure for this particular amendment because it was “a new idea that hasn’t been discussed before.”
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