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ASG implements senatorial position standards

Dylan Tussel, Senior Staff Writer

During their celebratory year-end banquet Tuesday, Miami University Associated Student Government (ASG) got down to work, wrapping up the academic year by unanimously passing one final piece of legislation: a resolution to develop senatorial standards.

While members of the executive cabinet have always been held to certain academic and disciplinary standards, the only requirement for someone to hold a senatorial position was that they be a full-time student, said Adam Clampitt-Dietrich, outgoing president of student senate and an author of the resolution.

Clampitt-Dietrich said the reason cabinet members were held to higher standards before senators is that cabinet members are paid for the work they do with ASG.

"They receive pay and we wanted to make sure that they were meeting certain standards and also weren't over-committing themselves," Clampitt-Dietrich said.

Mark Shanley, adviser for ASG, said he has worked at several other universities, most of which had already established similar requirements for their elected student representatives.

"I've worked at seven different universities throughout the course of my career," Shanley said. "At virtually every campus that I've worked at it has been a requirement of those elected officials that represent the universities to be in good standing with the institution academically and behaviorally."

Clampitt-Dietrich thought the universities that had such requirements for student-elected officials benefited from those requirements and he stressed the importance of ASG members maintaining a high level of achievement inside and outside the classroom.

"The fact that other schools have it is important, but we also think that as student leaders it's important to hold ourselves to a higher standard," Clampitt-Dietrich said. "Keeping with that higher standard and mission of putting academics as well as conduct at a high level, we're making sure we're bringing in the best representatives to make sure we do what the student body wants."

Although it is important for members of ASG to hold themselves to a higher standard, the resolution is not implying that a higher GPA signifies a greater ability to be an effective senator, Clampitt-Dietrich said.

"We have senators now that probably have like a point and a half difference in their GPAs and they contribute and represent students well in their own individual ways," Clampitt-Dietrich said. "We're not in any way trying to weed people out — we're just trying to make sure the people who are committing to a big commitment have the time and the ability to do such."

The resolution passed by student senate stipulated that senators "be in good academic and disciplinary standing with the university at the time of their election." This requirement will take effect Aug. 1, 2010. Clampitt-Dietrich said the exact requirements are a 2.0 GPA and one or two Code One offenses.

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"It's a 2.0 (GPA), but there is some leniency with that," Clampitt-Dietrich said. "Conduct standards are set by the Office of Student Ethics and Conflict Resolution — typically two Code One offenses will put you in bad standing, but it depends on the severity of the offense."

There are 24 positions for off-campus senators, and exactly that many students ran for the position for the next academic year. Clampitt-Dietrich said ASG has planned ahead in case this were to occur in the future and one or more of the candidates did not meet the new requirements.

"What we would do is after we identify that the people didn't meet the requirements, we would do another ad campaign looking for people to take the position, extend the position deadline for another number of days and really work hard to make sure we had enough people to fill the number of seats in the fall," Clampitt-Dietrich said. "I don't believe we'll have any issues with senators fulfilling the requirements."

Matthew Herbst, Tappan Hall senator, was initially opposed to the idea of setting a GPA and disciplinary requirement for senators, but has since given his support to the resolution.

"When they were initially proposing it, I didn't like it because it was going to stop people I didn't think should be stopped from joining senate," Herbst said. "I felt like they were going to set an arbitrary GPA requirement that had nothing to do with university policy, but based on how it's worded right now, the people who it's stopping probably are suspended or (in trouble) with the university already."