Senator Erich M Fabricius submitted the following report regarding Senate Bill 60, " AN ACT TO FORMALIZE THE STRUCTURE AND OPERATION OF STUDENT SENATE ACADEMIC COLLEGE DELEGATIONS", on Monday, January 27th 2003, as sponsor to said act :

Purpose of Legislation:

The Senate Delegation Act formalizes the existance of Senate Delegations as an operational unit. Provides basic guidelines on adminstration of these delegations.

Background Information:

The concept of delegations has been used loosely for many years, with co-elected Senators grouping together to accomplish particular goals, such as liasing with College Councils. 2001 saw increasing formal use of delegations, with delegation meetings and activities planned by several. The longest serving member of a delegation has traditionally taken up a coordinating role.

Notable Changes:

The bill endeveours to maintain consistancy with current practice whenever possible. Some things are new concepts:

Election of delegation head when no ranking member exists, to provide a single managing figure.

Requirement for regular meetings, as to avoid situations where the delegation head doesn't call meetings to the frustration of the members, and to provide consistancy across colleges. Delegations with a single member wouldn't need to "meet", but would still need to perodically file a report on the college's affairs.

College councils. Assigns delegations with the duty of keeping track of the College Councils, both for the delegations' own reference and for the reference of the Student Government.

General Commentary:

This act is intended to promote constituent accountablity, by providing expectations for constituency-level behavior by Senators. College Councils relations are no longer a "maybe" expectation, but a clearly shared responsiblity, managed by a single delegation head. Attendance records will allow students to keep track of their Senator's participation in delegation affairs.

Implementation Comments:

The Division of Web Development reports that the SG website generalize group/unit system has pre-existing support for delegation reports and attendance.