By Beau Bowman
The University of Iowa Student Government tries its best to simulate how the U.S. government operates. They both vote on bills, they both use the same legislative process, and some may say they both can be fairly inefficient.
UISG meets once a week, and of those meetings, the members only vote on bills every other week. This semester, UISG has only held six meetings in which bills were voted on.
Twice this semester, UISG has tabled bills. The discussions on the bills were extended because senators were not properly informed on the subjects. One of these bills introduced napping stations in the IMU. The other was expanding the Senate from 50 senators to 55.
Those two topics alone took up four of the six senate meetings this year. Next semester, UISG only has four Senate meetings scheduled.
“I do not think it would be productive to have two Senate meetings a week,” UISG president Liz Mills said. “The office hours serve as a way for questions to be answered and information clarified.”
UISG Vice President Morgan Brittain said he thinks UISG has been productive so far.
“We’ve gotten the tuition freeze that other schools haven’t, which is really nice,” he said. “As far as passing legislation goes, we haven’t necessarily passed too many bills compared with years in the past, and that could be due to all of the new senators we have this year.”
It is worth noting the state Board of Regents decides whether or not to freeze tuition.
The bill that would have expanded the senate from 50 to 55 senators took one whole meeting to discuss, then was tabled. Two weeks later, it was revisited and then pulled from the agenda for an unknown reason.
This left the meeting with nothing on the agenda, and senators adjourned 24 minutes after being gaveled in.
Speaker Brendan Power announced the pulling of the bill and expressed his disappointment in the organizational skill of the Senate.
“We want to make this session as efficient as possible,” Power said. “We can’t do that if we proceed the way we are doing things.”
Power thinks the loss of a number of veteran senators is to blame.
“We’ve had a lot of experienced senators leave us due to either disciplinary actions or resignation, mostly resignation, that has caused us to have to bring in new, inexperienced senators, which can slow down the legislative process,” he said. “I think there’s always room for improvement.”
