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October 22, 2004 > News > SA Senate denies pie-baking club official status

SA Senate denies pie-baking club official status

By Jenny Rees | Thresher Editorial Staff

In an unusual move, the SA senate voted not to approve a proposed club at its meeting Monday. The senate, which must approve any student organization before it can become an official club, voted against the Late Night Pie Club. SA President Derrick Matthews said the SA has not failed to approve any club that applied using the standard procedures during his time at Rice. The Late Night Pie Club formed the Saturday after Orientation Week when a group of three students decided to make a pie in the Lovett College kitchen. The group has met six times during the semester to bake and eat pies — five times in the Lovett kitchen and once at Will Rice College. The baking begins after midnight, and the group makes a different type of pie each time, Lovett freshman Julia Bursten, the club’s president, said. So far, pie flavors have included apple, peach, lemon, pecan and buckeye — a chocolate and peanut butter creme pie. The club baked pumpkin pie at its sixth meeting last night. The gatherings usually attract 10 to 20 students, mostly Lovett students but with other colleges represented as well, Bursten said. The club’s purpose is more social than culinary, she said. ‘It’s a very relaxing thing, a very social thing, and it made us feel a little more like we were at home,’ Bursten said. ‘It’s kind of like a support network for kids who are looking for home cooking as a way to feel less homesick.’ After the first few pie-baking sessions, several of the regular attendees began talking about forming an official club so they could reserve public spaces, charge dues to cover the costs of baking materials and generate wider publicity for the group, Bursten said. ‘We don’t have a lot of means of advertising since we’re not a formal club. … If we had the club name out in the club directory and had a better means of getting our name out, people would have more access to us,’ she said. Once approved by the SA, clubs can reserve rooms in the Student Center, set up mailboxes and Chase bank accounts through the Office of Student Activities and participate in activities fairs. They do not receive any funds, although they are eligible to apply for competitive campus grants. Brown College Senator James Lloyd said because Student Activities invests resources into providing support for each club, the SA should use discretion in approving them. ‘Whether or not we like the club, because of the fact that they receive support from Student Activities, you have to have a certain minimum requirement,’ Lloyd, a junior, said. Senate members were not convinced the Late Night Pie Club needed official student organization status, Matthews said. ‘One of the main problems was that people couldn’t see why it needed to exist as a club,’ Matthews, a Will Rice senior said. ‘You don’t need to be an official club to post a flyer or send a listserv announcement.’ Bursten said some senate members did not listen to her presentation and cut her off when she tried to argue for the club. ‘When it came my turn to speak, most of the officers seemed interested, but there were one or two people that were heavily and vocally skeptical, and they came across as attacking me and trying to shoot down my cause. … I feel like I wasn’t given fair and equal time to defend myself,’ Bursten said. Matthews asked the representatives of the four clubs requesting approval at the meeting to leave the room while the senate voted on their clubs, a new procedure for the SA. Matthews said he asked the club representatives to leave the room in order to encourage open debate. ‘Everyone’s a member of the SA, and constitutionally I can’t force anyone out of an open meeting, but I did ask if they would leave, and they did,’ Matthews said. ‘It was so the senate could have real discussion about the clubs. … A lot less restricted dialogue can come out of that.’ The SA constitution states no student may be barred from attending an open meeting of the senate. ‘The Student Senate shall … Hold publicly announced open meetings from which no one may be excluded,’ the constitution states. ‘By a two-thirds (2/3) vote, the Student Senate may hold a closed meeting to discuss matters requiring unusual privacy.’ Matthews said the senate the senate acted within its rights when it did not approve the club. ‘I think it all boiled down to the voting members being like, ‘It’s not our job to rubber-stamp clubs, it’s our job to approve clubs we think should be approved,” Matthews said. Hanszen College President Wade Malone was one of two voting members who voted to approve the club. Malone said he voted for the club because the senate has approved clubs almost automatically in the past and has not laid out specific enough guidelines to justify denying one. ‘Since we don’t have any clear criteria for what a club should and shouldn’t be, I felt like it was kind of arbitrary to deny a club, even if the reason for having it seemed kind of silly,’ Malone said. ‘Since I’ve been going to the SA we’ve approved some pretty silly clubs, and I didn’t feel like this club was any sillier than some of the clubs we’ve approved in the past.’ Lloyd said he disagrees with that argument. ‘I think saying that because the SA currently rubber-stamps all clubs means that we have to do that from now on isn’t valid,’ Lloyd said. Matthews said the senate should create clearer guidelines for evaluating proposed clubs, and he hopes to address the problem at the SA meeting Monday. ‘In the entire constitution there’s no criteria [for a club] … so it’s left to each individual voting member to decide for themselves what would be an appropriate club,’ Matthews said. Matthews said he hopes a more stringent club approval process will reduce the number of clubs with similar purposes. ‘I think clubs are hurting each other because the strength of any club is the number of dedicated members you have, and a lot of clubs that are redundant are just fighting for the same group of people when they could be working together,’ Matthews said. Malone also said he thinks systematic changes are necessary. However, he said until larger changes are made, the SA should stick with its precedent of approving all clubs for which a constitution is submitted and a representative attends the meeting. ‘I think there are a lot of clubs that are created that don’t need to be official clubs, but until we reexamine it and set some ground rules for what should and shouldn’t be a club, I don’t think we should deny someone who … played by the rules we had set,’ Malone said. Lloyd said while he is in favor of setting out clearer guidelines, he does not think the Late Night Pie Club was treated unfairly. ‘[Having clearer standards] would have been useful in this case — however, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome,’ Lloyd said. ‘It helped us to see that there is becoming a pressing need for defining the guidelines for club approval.’ Malone said he does not think the SA should seek to define each club’s value. ‘I don’t think we should just rubber-stamp every club, but I feel like we should only deny clubs that are absolutely absurd or offensive,’ Malone said.

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