When last we left our government agents, Thanksgiving loomed over a meeting rife with uncertainty and backtracking, and freshman senator Rohini (RO-HYNN-EE) Bhatia had taken her place at the table. With a vacancy on the Steering Committee, the senate moved to elect a member to the spot, but due to doubt over Steering Committee’s openness, the vote was postponed for a week. LET’S SEE IF THE TURKEYS GOT IT TOGETHER.

Open forum started with Sen. Harry Brookstein’s somber denunciation of UR Security, which took 56 hours to notify students of last Tuesday’s stabbing near the Interfaith Chapel. Sen. Calvin Yoon noted his apprehension that three incidents had happened recently, but Sen. Jon Junig noted that the past few problems were roughly average. Sen. Sneha Rath also noted that Yoon was a silly freshman. SHHH, YOU’RE NOT ACTUALLY SUPPOSED TO TELL THEM THAT!

For Love of All the Country’s Knights! The SA Treasurer noted that Mini Baja put in a clumsy request for $800 to help offset increased entry fees. The group has submitted multiple requests, prompting Sen. Sylvia Guerra to ask if there was a limit on requests. Flack replied that no limit existed, although he didn’t know why. Sen. Dennis Nave also noted that most of Baja’s funding came from non-SA sources, implying that it wasn’t too problematic if SAAC handed the organization a little more money. ÁNDALE! ÁNDALE!

Communications Chair Brookstein noted the Hive was mostly updated to reflect member changes, and hoped to have a picture of Bhatia taken at the next meeting. ACCEPTING ALL WAGERS.

Projects and Services is all about bikes and the winter storage program. While Co-Chair Alissa Brill pleaded with senators to take a shift this week, President Eric Weissmann inquired about how the program was being advertised and recommended using Facebook. Co-Chair and Sen. Bradley Halpern noted a few ways and mentioned notices put in the Weekly Buzz. Which was true, except for the parts where it wasn’t.

While most people were talking turkey this past week, the Senate was talking steer (ALWAYS CLEVER, WE ARE). Steering decided last night that they were supposed to act like an executive committee and therefore be closed to outsiders. After a round of nominations, Bhatia stood as the only candidate, and one vote later (and no executive session!) she was announced as the newest member of Steering Committee. POWER!

Weissers’ weekly report focused heavily on fall break, which the Faculty Council just started discussing. Then the Council stopped discussing it, because they wanted Weissmann to get off their lawns. Why, back in the Council’s days, kids used to work year round, and they didn’t get off Christmas or Memorial Day or any of those other newfangled holidays like “Rosh Hashanah” and… well, anyway, Weissmann laid out the options for how to expand fall break and reading period before the senate and took a straw poll of preferences. The assembly, including most of the gallery, endorsed having fall break run Saturday-Tuesday and reading period frontload an extra day; the semester would begin two days earlier. WHIPPERSNAPPERS! (In this joke, everyone on the Faculty Council is old.)

The last big news came from Speaker Kierstin Hughes, who announced that per Steering’s self-reflection, Vice President Brittany Crowley (and subsequent Veeps) would now get a vote in the committee. Second-in-Command keeps gettin’ better.

Lastly, we received some clarification from Hughes per last week’s post: senators don’t need to be sworn in to office; the senate only has to certify the election results (done earlier this semester) and by-laws automatically do the rest of the work. WE SWEAR IT’S TRUE.

We’ve upped the links this week, but only for your benefit. Next week will be the last senate meeting of the semester. Who will slap whom? What issue will go unresolved until January? And most importantly, what will we do every Monday for the month following? “NOTHING PRODUCTIVE” IS THE ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION.

Adjourned!