Issue date: 11/20/08 Section: News

Appointees to the Student Supreme Court, from left to right, John Hamilton, Jacob Griffin, Jared Hausmann and Quentin E. Frazier, Jr. are sworn in during Wednesday night's Student Government meeting. (Erin Matheny/The Daily Eastern News)

Student Government finally has its third branch of government.

The last three members were appointed at the Student Senate meeting Wednesday night and the rest were presented.

"I was looking for another way to get involved," said Nathan Leitner, a senior political science major. "It is a way to interact with the student body."

Joy Raines, a freshman communications disorders major, wanted to join to be involved in something that has not been on campus in a long time.

There has not been a Student Supreme Court on campus since about 10 years ago.

John Hamilton, a first year graduate student in political science, wants to lead by example.

"I am an older student and have experience," he said. "I have read and written about constitutional law and anytime you start up a court like this, you need leadership."

The Student Supreme Court will look at cases having to do with Student Government elections and the student Bill of Rights.

"Student Supreme Court would deal with (issues like) if there was ever a case dealing with voter fraud or people putting up material where they are not supposed to as part of the Elections Reform Act," said Student Body President Levi Bulgar.

Plus, Bulgar said the Student Bill of Rights is something members are going to have to become acquainted with.

"I would not have known it if I wasn't a part of putting this together," Bulgar said. "It is not widely publicized."

Every situation will be different as well.

"Each situation will have its own precedence," Allison said.

Jacob Griffin was also appointed as Chief Justice to the Student Supreme Court.

"I picked him because he was involved in so many things on Eastern's campus," Bulgar said.

The Committee on Constitutional Oversight also needs to look over the constitution dealing with the emergence of the supreme court.

"We can hear cases right now, but there is a lot of vagueness and ambiguity in the constitution right now," Griffin said. "We need to hash out all the kinks in the wording."

Allison also said there are a lot of nuts and bolts to work out right now since this is the first court in awhile.

"We are a work in progress," Allison said.

Also at the meeting, an additional allocation for University Board movies went through Student Senate with a vote of 14-1-2. The allocation was for $2,621.

Two other allocations were tabled, one for Apportionment Board staff payroll for Laurel Fuqua and the other for University Board advertising for DEN ads. The additional allocation for Apportionment Board payroll was for $2,671 and the one for University Board ads was for $3,000.

Both of these were tabled for the next meeting.

A resolution to have a library hours survey through e-mail was also tabled for the next meeting.

"I am excited to see this survey go out. I think we will get positive feedback from it," said Jackie Alexander, student vice president for academic affairs.

Chris Kromphardt, chair of the academic affairs committee, put this survey together. It has questions such as how many times students go to the library a day.

Diane Hoadley, past president of the Charleston Area Chamber of Commerce, talked about how local purchases support local jobs and Dan Nadler, vice president for student affairs, invited all Student Senate members to the groundbreaking of the new textbook rental on Edgar Drive Friday at 3:30 p.m.

Student Government will have elections on Dec. 8 and 9. There are nine on-campus, nine off-campus and four at-large seats open.

Heather Holm can be reached at 581-7942 or haholm@eiu.edu.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools

The Daily Eastern News encourages on-topic, civil discussion on its articles posted online. It is our policy not to screen comments before they are posted or edit them after they are posted. However, we reserve the right to remove comments that are off-topic, malicious, libelous or include excessive foul language. The DEN also reserves the right to turn off all comments on any story it deems necessary.

Comments violating copyright law will also be removed.

Users who repeatedly violate this policy will be banned from commenting.

If you have any questions on our comment policy or wish to report a comment that you feel violates these standards, please e-mail a link to the article to our Online Editor at DENNews.com@gmail.com.