Senators promote transparency, fail to record votes

Editor's Note: The following is Part 2a in our "Hidden on the Hilltop: SMU's Culture of Secrecy" series, which examines the secretive nature of various operations at SMU.

For the rest of the series: Part 1, Part 2b, Part 3, Part 4

SMU Student Senators debated a bill at their December 1 meeting that would allow a senator to submit legislation without attaching his or her name to it.

Senators were divided on the issue.

"I am against this because every student has the right to know what pieces are written and by whom," engineering senator Joseph Esau said during the debate. "They all have the right to a transparent government."

Jack Benage, former membership committee chair, had a different opinion. He supported the bill and urged senators not to evaluate the bill based on transparency.

"Sure the student would not know who authored the piece, but they would know about the piece," he said at the meeting.

The bill ultimately failed, 30-6.  It is not known which senators voted for or against this legislation because no one recorded their votes.

This is not an unusual situation. A Daily Campus investigation found that student senators rarely practice transparency by using a roll call to record their votes.

Based on available records for the past five years, senators have voted on 92 bills, but only used the roll call vote four times, or less than 5 percent. This means that SMU students would find it virtually impossible to judge a senator based on his or her voting record.

Senators routinely failed to record their votes even though most votes were split, meaning it was not unanimous. Split votes occurred on 70 bills, including all four roll call votes. Unanimous votes took place on just 22 pieces of legislation.

"I'm thinking they must have had more than four important votes since 2005," graduate student Ava Damri said.

Senate bylaws call for the roll call vote to be used "in resolving the most important issues." Some evidence suggests Student Senators interpret this as a way of ducking controversial issues while recording their votes on easy decisions.

On October 27, 2009, senators took a roll call vote on a bill regarding the donation of two mustangs to SMU by T. Boone Pickens and declaring Peruna the official mascot of SMU. Three senators voted against this bill: Cox senator Alex Linn, then-Lyle senator Will McCormack and Dedman II senator Seth Sloan.

But Senators didn't use a roll call vote when deciding whether there should be a student referendum on the issue of a sexual identity seat. Instead, Senate voted down the proposal using a simple show of hands vote.

Then-speaker Alaa Al-Barghuti acknowledged adding representation for gay students was a controversial issue. But, Al-Barghuti added, she "didn't want a senator to be viewed differently or harassed by either side" based on a recorded vote. 

The Speaker is in charge of deciding how Senate votes on any piece of legislation.

SMU students were incredulous to learn how seldom senators record their votes.

"I'm not sure about previous votes, but the fact that the Student Senate did not use roll call voting on the LGBT seat makes it appear that the senators did not want to be clearly identified as either for or against the seat," Damri said.

None of the current members of the Student Senate interviewed for this story said they plan to introduce legislation to increase the number of recorded votes in the future.

"A lot of pieces aren't controversial," Speaker Will McCormack said. McCormack took over as Speaker in January.

"If it's something controversial and I don't want to be responsible for seeing everyone's hands, then absolutely I'm going to do a roll call vote," he said. "If I know it's going to pass 90 plus percent, show of hands is something that I feel comfortable with knowing that they're [senators] comfortable with it."

McCormack defines bills as controversial when there are a large number of people coming to Senate because of the bill or when the bill affects a greater number of students. He noted that some bills don't really affect students—instead they honor someone or affect the paperwork behind Senate.

Junior Miguel Esparza said Senate's current voting practices make it easier to withhold information about their votes on major issues during election campaigns.

"It's a bit worrisome," Junior Miguel Esparza said about the lack of roll call votes. "You want to hold your senators accountable."

Study Body Vice President Elect Austin Prentice was surprised at the number of roll call votes during past years. He has a different reason for why senators don't use roll call votes: the process takes longer than a usual voice or show of hands vote.

"It's just something that most people don't want to go through the process [requesting roll call votes]," he said. "It's because they don't want to extend the length of Senate for that day because it takes a little more time. Voting takes place at the very end of Senate, so sometimes it's been a long day—people just want to vote ‘ay/nay.'