North Texas Daily

Rhiannon Saegert / Senior Staff Writer

The Student Government Association summer senate met for the first time June 3 to officially elect its new executive staff, get some housekeeping done and begin planning ahead for their fall semester.

“We’re kind of tweaking some stuff, we’re changing some stuff, we’re trying to set a foundation,” SGA vice president Christopher Lee said. “We’re doing a little more early on, especially with it being June.”

The student governing body discussed plans to alter some bylaws, especially those referring to graduate students’ representation as SGA now only represents undergraduate students.

“The graduate school is no longer a part of SGA,” SGA president Adam Alattry said. “We’ll go over our bylaws again in the next few weeks. We’re probably going to talk about it again in a later summer senate meeting once we figure out what the legislative process is for the split.”

Alattry said there are plans to dissolve the House of Representatives, which SGA formed last fall semester.

“We’re proposing that we get rid of it altogether,” Alattry said. “Between [shirts] and name tags, that’s like $3,000 or $4,000 in student service fees that goes into it when we’ve had it for a semester now and we’ve seen nothing come out of it.

The executive staff for fall was officially approved as well. The new executive staff members are: Chief of staff Hannah Bagheri, director of student affairs Dawaelyne Jones, director of campus outreach Mikayla Barner, director of leadership Karen Alday and director of public relations Connor Gray.

Jones said the new executives, much like the rest of summer senate, will be focused on planning ahead for fall rather than making any major changes.

“Basically, summer senate is making sure that the switch happens as easily and smoothly as possible,” Jones said.

He said he plans to begin reaching out to student organizations on campus when the new semester starts.

SGA senator Sam Deleon is serving on summer senate for the first time. He said he hopes this summer will bring internal and external improvements to SGA.

“The majority of time, what summer senate does is focus more on the internal,” Deleon said. “So if the bylaws need to be remade, if they need to figure out new logos, or come up with ideas for the fall or coming spring.”

He said that summer senate can be a good stepping stone for new senators before fall begins.

“I just hope that we can really help each other out with learning the proper procedure,” he said. “I hope that we senators and the executive branch get to work together more efficiently.”