Jose Gonzalez-Campelo/The Cougar
Last Wednesday, the Student Government Association convened for their second meeting of the Fall 2024 semester.
SGA discussed various on-campus dining issues, dorm safety concerns, protecting UH protestors and debated a bill to create a new committee for Senate ethics.
During two-minute speeches by the Members of the Senate, Senators repeatedly yielded time to Sen. Mohib Awan and graduate student Sen. Jesus Nieto to allow them to have longer speeches.
UH Protestors
Sen. Nieto discussed various topics, the most pressing of which was his concern for UH protestors.
On August 27th, pro-Palestine protests at UH laid signs on the Student Center South floor and adorned the student center with the flag of Palestine, keffiyehs and other signs of support for Palestinians.
Their protest signs and other symbols were ordered to be removed by UH officials. The next day police was called by the Dean of Students, on protestors decorating light poles on campus with keffiyehs, according to a recent Instagram post by Students for Justice in Palestine HTX.
However, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Paul Kittle denied any discrimination against the organization and emphasized that the policies are uniformly applied across all situations and individuals without regard to the viewpoints of any specific group.
Nieto pushed for a special committee to be created to discuss the recent treatment of pro-Palestine protests and see what the Senate can do.
“I strongly believe that the Student Center is for student groups, and I want student groups to feel welcome in their Student Union,” Nieto said. “I will not tolerate this type of maneuver and this needs to be addressed by the SGA.”
Last year, the University closed both the LGBTQ Center and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office in accordance with Senate Bill 17, a Texas ban on DEI offices and other resources. Nieto elaborated on this loss and his concerns.
“We lost the LGBTQ Center, we lost the DEI office. I’m not going to lose student rights on campus,” Nieto said.
This is not the first time Nieto has expressed concern for pro-Palestine protests, and he referred to a video he posted before the meeting about the SJP at UH.
He encouraged other senators to watch the video to learn more about what’s going on and immerse into what’s happening.
Dining Hours
Sen. Nieto then moved on to addressing residential issues like the Food Advisory Committee. He brought attention to a petition created by students to return Moody Dining to 24/7 hour service and its growing number of signatures.
After Nieto’s speech, Sen. Awan gave his report. In his report, Awan addressed student complaints about Moody’s new dining hours, Cougar Woods’ quality of food service, the overcrowding and possibly restructuring UH dining hours.
He additionally addressed meal plan issues and asked for the Senate and Food Advisory Committee to consider changing current meal plans to compete with other universities.
Rules and Ethics Senate Committee Act
A new adjustment to the Rules and Ethics Senate Committee Act was presented by Neito for a first reading.
The bill introduced a vote when removing senators instead of solely allowing the Speaker of the House to remove senators.
“The reason I wrote this in the bill is that there are chairpersons who are appointed by the speaker and approved by the entire Senate,” Nieto said. “I don’t believe that it’s the chairs who are able to be removed by a flick of a wrist.”
Others opposed this idea because they believed it could go against the reason behind having a Speaker of the House in the first place.
“Right now it’s under the discretion of whoever serves on the chairs or vice chairs. It’s under the discretion of the speaker,” Awan said. “I don’t think it’s necessarily right to have it only be subject to removal by censure.”
After much debate on the adjustments, the Senate made a motion to table the bill for further discussions.
However, after the motion was passed, many senators were still wary about a potential conflict of interest.
