In what Maria Halloran, congresswoman representing the College of Arts and Sciences and head of the Oversight and Reform Committee, called an ironic turn of events, Congress did not meet quorum Tuesday, so they could not vote on the resolution regarding quorum, or any others.
When at least half of the 64 Congress members attend the voting meeting, quorum is met, and Congress can vote on resolutions.
“The point of quorum is that we are a body that is supposed to be representative of the entirety of IU, and it’s hard to claim that when we don’t have all our representatives, or at least a simple majority of the representatives, here,” Maggie Oates, speaker of Congress and representative of the School of Informatics and Computing, said.
Oates said the issue of not making quorum stems from the lack of awareness of IUSA Congress, coupled with a diminished prestige of the organization compared to when it started. Members of Congress meet each week, alternating between full voting assemblies and committee meetings each week. Oates said coordinating the meeting of 64 people every week is also difficult.
Andre Hatami, grammarian and congressman for off-campus residency, said the fact that it is only October is part of the reason quorum is not always met.
“It’s still the beginning of the year, so there are people that are kind of iffy about being in student government and maybe have missed a couple of meetings,” Hatami said. ”... Hopefully everyone who have been missing will be kicked out and new people will flush in and quorum will be met every week.”
Oates said there is a strict attendance policy within IUSA Congress, which dictates that a member be impeached if they send a proxy to four meetings or miss three meetings with no proxy.
Though this policy does work to remove inactive members, Oates said it also decreases the number of people in Congress and, therefore, makes it more difficult to reach quorum.
Halloran and the oversight and reform committee wrote a piece of legislation intended to amend the bylaws to clarify what quorum is for Congress. Currently, the bylaws do not specify if a simple majority of active members or simple majority of all members should be present to vote.
The resolution would change the language so only a simple majority of active members need to be present to vote on resolutions.
This means if only 52 seats are filled, as is currently true in Congress, only 26 members would need to be present to move to a vote. Under the current language of the bylaws, Congress still needs 32 people present to vote, even though only 52 of the 64 seats are filled.
Units that still have open seats for representatives include the School of Education, Eigenmann Residence Center, Family Student Housing, Forest Residence Center, the School of Law, the School of Optometry, Read Residence Hall, the School of Social Work, Teter Residence Center and University Division students.
Because Congress could not vote on resolutions, the assembly briefly broke to work in committees.
Calvin Sanders, press secretary of Congress and representative of Union Street Center, said failing to meet quorum does prevent voting, but it does not halt all IUSA Congress activity.
“It limits the ability for us to vote, but it doesn’t limit the ability for us to continue to research legislation, continue to meet and to continue to bounce ideas off of each other to make sure that the legislation that we do bring forward to the voting sessions is better,” Calvin Sanders said.
