Spring Break
Senate should revisit Environmental Committee next year
Joseph Grinnell, jgrinnel@smu.edu
Issue date: 5/4/07 Section: Opinion
Earlier this week, at their ceremonial first meeting, Mayor Miller addressed the newly elected Student Senate about their capacity to reinstate the Senate Environment Committee (EC) next year as an operational Standing Committee. Many of the new senators may have never heard about this issue beforehand, but they will soon realize how much of a difference they have the opportunity to make in the senate. Despite the propaganda from the former senate members, many of next year's members will soon learn that the Student Issues Committee has simply been revamped and renamed the Student Concerns Committee. This committee will consist of a chair and two vice-chairs to work on environmental and diversity "student concerns," among others, but will not even be labeled as such (e.g. environment vice-chair) nor be obligated to carry on any of the former committee's responsibilities or commitments.
The architects of this change have argued that the EC has a negligible role in Senate and the university as a whole and have suggested that awareness of environmental issues could simply be promulgated by the SMU Environmental Society. In reality, the Environment Committee serves many critical functions, one of the most important being a liaison to the Campus Planning and Operations Department consisting of the Energy Management, Custodial Services and Purchasing divisions. In fact, the SMU environmental manager and the director of energy management at SMU both came to the senate meeting the day of this pivotal vote and avowed their support and desire to have a university-backed environmental committee to work with. Moreover, the EC had, for the most part, already passed on the torch of environmental event organizing (for Texas Recycles Day, etc.), to the now more active SMU Environmental Society as of fall 2005, so that the EC could concentrate on maintaining what it had already established.
The Student Senate has now castrated itself. Not only did it recently ban itself from doing any kind of "programming," which isn't a stretch now that there is no Diversity or Environment Committee, but the temporary committee formed to write the bylaws of the new Student Concerns Committee rejected the current EC chair's attempt to transfer some EC responsibilities into the Student Concerns Committee bylaws. The Student Senate is officially telling the student body that anything more than simply encouraging environmentally friendly practices on campus is not their problem anymore.
The architects of this change have argued that the EC has a negligible role in Senate and the university as a whole and have suggested that awareness of environmental issues could simply be promulgated by the SMU Environmental Society. In reality, the Environment Committee serves many critical functions, one of the most important being a liaison to the Campus Planning and Operations Department consisting of the Energy Management, Custodial Services and Purchasing divisions. In fact, the SMU environmental manager and the director of energy management at SMU both came to the senate meeting the day of this pivotal vote and avowed their support and desire to have a university-backed environmental committee to work with. Moreover, the EC had, for the most part, already passed on the torch of environmental event organizing (for Texas Recycles Day, etc.), to the now more active SMU Environmental Society as of fall 2005, so that the EC could concentrate on maintaining what it had already established.
The Student Senate has now castrated itself. Not only did it recently ban itself from doing any kind of "programming," which isn't a stretch now that there is no Diversity or Environment Committee, but the temporary committee formed to write the bylaws of the new Student Concerns Committee rejected the current EC chair's attempt to transfer some EC responsibilities into the Student Concerns Committee bylaws. The Student Senate is officially telling the student body that anything more than simply encouraging environmentally friendly practices on campus is not their problem anymore.
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