The Student Association Senate tabled two of President Peak Sen Chua’s nominations for Student Court Wednesday after the nominees failed to meet constitutional requirements for the position.
The SA’s constitution prevents any Student Court member from holding an “elected or appointed” position in the SA or another student organization. Natalie Ioele, the activism director of the Feminist Student Union, and Lauren Kim, the president of the Tax Law Society, were not approved because they didn’t meet those conditions.
Darryl Jennings, a second-year law school student, was the only nominee to be approved.
Student Court decides internal disputes within the SA and ensures the organization’s governing documents are upheld. The SA president appoints the court’s five judges, who then must be confirmed by the senate.
Chua said he will nominate new candidates to Student Court whose outside activities comply with constitutional guidelines by the SA’s next meeting Oct. 23
“Regardless of the situation, Lauren and Natalie are fantastic candidates to the Student Court,” he said.
The senate also filled its five remaining vacancies during the meeting, converting one of its open undergraduate seats to an undergraduate-at-large position.
The senate voted at its last meeting to convert two school-specific undergraduate seats to undergraduate-at-large positions if the SA didn’t receive any applications for those seats by Wednesday’s meeting. No one applied to the School of Medicine and Health Sciences undergraduate seat and the senate voted Wednesday to confirm Will Raderman to the newly-converted undergraduate-at-large seat.
Raderman said he wanted to serve on the senate’s finance committee and focus on academic initiatives, like increasing science lab courses from one to two credits, and social initiatives, like forming a fossil fuel divestment committee. He said he would also seek to implement a polling system on the SA’s website where students could vote on the kinds of issues they think need the most dedication from the SA.
“That way they can get a lot more direction from students themselves on initiatives they’re really passionate about,” he said.
The senate confirmed Nahid Sidiqui to serve as the undergraduate senator for the College of Professional Studies and Shaheera Jalil Albasit to fill an open graduate seat in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. The senate also filled two first-year non-voting graduate seats.
“There’s been a lot of stress on international students being different, but that means that there’s a lot of possibility for reform from me,” Albasit said. “I chose GW because it was an international campus, but everywhere I go is from a U.S. perspective. You need diversity because I’m sure you could benefit from an international perspective.”
Sen. Alvin Lam, SEAS-G, was also reinstated as a senator after he was suspended for violating the SA’s attendance policy for meetings.
SA Executive Vice President Sydney Nelson was unanimously confirmed to serve as the voting student representative on the Faculty Senate’s education policy committee, a position her predecessor, Thomas Falcigno, also held. Freshman Jacquelyn Frazee was also confirmed as senate deputy chief of staff.
Liz Konneker contributed reporting.
