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October 22, 2004 > Opinion > The SA should let everyone eat pie

The SA should let everyone eat pie

By The Rice Thresher Editorial Staff | Thresher Editorial Staff

We disagree with the Student Association Senate’s decision Monday to deny club status to the proposed Late Night Pie Club. The denial, the first we can recall, breaks with precedent and is inconsistent with the SA’s goal to encourage and support student organizations at Rice. The SA plans to discuss the structure of the club approval process at its next meeting, and we hope the senate will vote for reform. Instead of scheduling approvals on a week-by-week basis, the SA should designate one meeting per month as its official club approval date. At that meeting, the SA should provide a full list of clubs grouped by category on the back of its agenda. That way, voting members will easily be able to assess whether a proposed new club has a unique mission that does not duplicate that of an already-existing club. Instead of approving or disapproving clubs based on subjective expectations, the senate should create a set of objective criteria and evaluate proposed clubs accordingly. Currently, each club must submit a valid constitution and secure a faculty sponsor. We think that a group of students that makes the effort to draft a constitution and seek out a faculty sponsor is serious about obtaining club status and should not be denied arbitrarily. Additionally, SA President Derrick Matthews made a mistake when he asked the club representatives who presented at Monday’s meeting to leave during discussion of their proposals. Not only is there no precedent for such a request, but it also violates the spirit of the SA constitution. According to the constitution, no student may be excluded from an open meeting, and meetings can only be closed by a two-thirds vote when matters of ‘unusual privacy’ are involved. Senate members should be mature enough to openly and respectfully discuss their concerns about proposed clubs with club representatives present. Club representatives should be prepared to respond to criticism without taking offense. Before Monday’s meeting, the SA had already planned to discuss reform of the club approval process at this week’s meeting. Senate members have expressed dissatisfaction with the SA’s unwritten policy of rubber-stamping clubs, some of which seem frivolous. We agree that changes are necessary, but we think the senate was wrong to make an example of the Late Night Pie Club before setting clear standards for club approval. We think club approval should rely only on objective criteria, and the worthiness of a club should only come into question if it is repetitive of another club, malicious or hateful in intent, or in violation of the Code of Student Conduct. But for students who want to have their pie and eat it, too, becoming official should not be such a headache.

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