This will be a somewhat rambling piece about what was discussed at Monday’s AAS meeting, but if there is one thing to take out of the column it is this: the AAS has no intimate relationship with Program Board and should not be held responsible for the Spring Concert fiasco. The email that Program Board sent out to the student body about their failure to reach an agreement with an artist for Spring Concert was the first we had heard of it. Our own representative to the Program Board (Peter Crane ’15), was not updated about the progress of negotiations, nor was anyone else.
The full 2011-2012 Senate has finally been seated.
Indeed, the fourth meeting of the AAS on Monday night began with a classic Senate tradition — the swearing-in ceremony. Those elected to the Senate by the student body last Thursday were not officially senators until they recited an “oath of office.” These 10 senators-elect — eight from the class of 2015 and two from the class of 2013 — had to assure the rest of the Senate that, among other things, they had no “mental reservations” or “purpose of evasion” before being sworn in.
I had some time this week to reflect on my last column, where I talked about how the AAS was playing hardball with the administration over funding for senior bar night. Maybe all it took was talking to my friend at the College of Charleston, who is trying to convince his college administration to stop a policy of aggressively patting down dorm visitors, but it dawned on me that things generally function pretty well at Amherst. When the AAS almost barricades the doors of Converse over about $1,000 of social funding, it’s a testament to how well this school actually operates.
In what might be the most dramatic standoff in recent AAS history, the Senate and College administration continue to stand at odds over recent social policy decisions.
Last year, then-AAS Senator (and now current President) Romen Borsellino started a column in The Student to keep the student body in touch with the weekly doings of the AAS. Romen sensed (correctly) that few outside of the Senate understood what went on in Senate meetings, and even fewer believed that the AAS was serving a real, valuable purpose on campus.
