Legislative Council closes one session, opens the next
Following the outcome of last week’s UCSU elections, Legislative Council is moving forward with a fresh ensemble of student leaders.
The 69th legislative session met for the first time on Thursday, with new Tri-executives and Representatives-at-large from the victorious Drive ticket being sworn in to their new positions on the council.
This immediately followed the final meeting of the 68th session, which unanimously approved two bills before departing members gave a series of lighthearted goodbyes to their peers. Veronica Lingo, a media studies major and School of Journalism and Mass Communication senator with the session, joked about her time on the council before saying that it had been an honor to work with her fellow legislators.
“It’s so rare that you get to be part of a body that makes history,” Lingo said.
Representative-at-large Daniel Ramos, a senior political science major, said he loved his time with Legislative Council and plans to stay involved with UCSU through some sort of executive staff position. Ramos said he learned a lot from the budget process with the cost centers and hopes to someday be a legislator.
“The one thing I wish is that we would have started conversations about effective legislation earlier,” he said.
The council did unanimously approve two new pieces of legislation before making the transition to the new session. One bill, authored by Ramos and UCSU sustainability director Amy Harris, will establish new waste reduction policies for all campus events funded by student fees.
This means that both student groups and cost centers must use either re-usable or compostable dishware, unless an alternative product is not available. Harris said she would particularly like to avoid the use of Styrofoam.
“Can we make (event hosts) use re-usable mugs?,” she asked. “I hate Styrofoam.”
The second bill brought to the 68th session will forbid any programming guidelines from Legislative Council to Program Council, with operating and programming decisions instead being delegated to the UMC Board and Program Council itself. The bill, authored by Graduate School Senator Erik Bondurant, “seeks to update the official framework (of Program Council) to better represent the current practices.”
68th Session Legislative Council president Boyce Postma, a senior architecture major, adjourned the meeting and called the first meeting of the 69th session to order after a short recess. He then accepted his new position as the session’s vice president, with former Representative-at-large Blaine Pellicore taking over as president.
Newly elected Tri-executives Dustin Farivar, Ryan Biehle and Victoria Garcia were also sworn into the new session of Legislative Council by Postma. The same oath was administered to three of the four incoming Representatives-at-large, with only senior integrative physiology major Rasheed Lawal absent from the meeting.
Postma said, as vice president, he could focus on the finer mechanics of UCSU and making the organization run more efficiently. He said, as president, he had responsibilities everywhere all the time.
Postma also said he thinks the 68th session accomplished a lot during its time together.
“The quality of the legislation was higher, overall,” he said. “I don’t think I voted (against) much.”
Pellicore said he would like to show more progress during the upcoming fall session. He said he personally plans on writing a fair amount of legislation, in addition to working with the Tri-executives to improve campus life.
“I’m incredibly interested in the capacity of what UCSU is able to do to improve upon student’s experience,” he said. “I’m honored to have the ability to have my responsibilities increase.”
The council will not be meeting next week due to the annual dinner that will begin at 6 p.m. in the Glenn Miller Ballroom. It will have its second meeting the following week.
Contact Campus Press Staff Writer George Plaven at george.plaven@colorado.edu.
