That is a unique organization, to say the least.
It's comprised of I think roughly sixty members
[representing each college], so each college has about four senators from each year.
That would probably be more than sixty. It's significant.
So when you come in as a freshman
just like with anything you're learning your main job is to reach out to your fellow peers and communicate what's going on,
and for a freshman coming in, in a big university, that's a really hard challenge, I think.
We tried to employ some email things but ended up going through our advisors
and just mainly communicating with them and letting the advisors send out emails to the students of the things
that were going on, or hosting college events.
It turned out to be a lot about that when you're a freshman,
hosting events that bring your college together.
Senate is kind of college-centric.
Each senator is kind of looking out for their own college.
Once you get to be on a committee though
then you have the responsibility for the whole student body,
and really they all have a responsibility to advocate for the whole student body
but the point is to make sure that each college is being represented,
so the vet school and the Centennial Campus colleges,
they're all there, represented by about sixteen senators,
and the organization just makes sure that the concerns of students are being heard.
Dr. Stafford attends every single senate meeting.
He's never missed one since I was around
and that's four years of senate meetings,
and that alone, as the vice chancellor for student affairs,
the fact that he is present to hear all of the concerns
is a pretty big deal.
Each senator is supposed to, between meetings, be asking their fellow peers and their classmates:
What's up? Are you having issues going to and from class,
are you having issues getting classes, et cetera,
because there's no way for the administrators to ask all thirty-four thousand students so they look to the student senate
especially to field those student issues and concerns.
I remember my sophomore year it was a big issue that the students,
the girls especially, on Centennial Campus were
not wanting to leave late at night because it was too late, it was dark,
their classes were over but they were staying to do work late on Centennial
nd there wasn't a lit route from their classes in the building to the bus
or from their classes in the building to the parking lots.
So the student senate helped to make sure there was a lit path, address those concerns,
and the university was more than willing to help once they found out that that was an issue.