It’s hard to believe that we’ve already reached the end of the third week of the semester. Sadly, this also means the three-week bliss period of semi-low workloads, freedom to shift your schedules and excuses for having fun because you haven’t seen anyone for five weeks is coming to a close.

Senators snapped back into reality at our first two Senate meetings of the spring semester. Two weeks ago, we were lucky to hear a presentation by Andy Costanzo, an expert in the field of parliamentary procedure (which, for those of you who don’t have to worry about how to run effective student Senate meetings, is a wonderful method of keeping our meetings from turning into SGA chaos, and also makes sure we’re getting things accomplished for you in a timely and efficient manner).

We’re aso very excited about this past week’s Senate meeting, in which we held our first Senate-wide Issues Forum to generate the subjects that will drive the SGA agenda for the coming semester. We suspended the rules of order, ate some Slices and started spouting out over 100 ideas that were written on pieces of paper and hung around the Ho Lecture Room.

Our brainstorming session produced ideas as farfetched as a Colgate Monorail system up the hill and as simple as getting the Townhouses plowed regularly, as well as more efficient transportation from the Townhouses in general. We armed our Senators with 12 Post-it notes to stick on what they felt to be the most pressing issues written around the room, voting for what they considered, on behalf of their constituencies, to be the top 12 issues to be dealt with this spring.

The issue votes are currently being tallied for next week’s Senate meeting, when we will divide our committees into issue “working groups” to effectively address specific concerns (look out for results). Get excited for the possibility of bringing back Daddio’s (yes, Daddio’s), having a say in what moves into the empty storefronts downtown, bringing down food prices on campus and improving quality, keeping Frank and the Edge open for study space all semester, increasing student/administration/Board of Trustees transparency, and maybe even opening up the ski hill.

As Preston noted a few weeks ago, there is great potential for the 2005-06 Senate to leave a significant mark on student government at Colgate. Members of the Constitutional Revision Committee (CRC) have worked tirelessly over the last semester and throughout winter break to draft a new and improved SGA constitution that we hope will be approved in the Senate later this spring.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone, and stay warm!