Goals made by the Student Government Association's month-old executive slate worried many in the organization's senate meeting Wednesday afternoon.
Alliance vice president Heather Closson allowed 20 minutes of discussion at the start of the meeting about the idea of creating a secretary of greek relations to advise the slate. Fraternity members filled the room's gallery seats, but were barred from joining the discussion, which was limited to senators.
"I feel a little disrespected and I feel any greek should feel disrespected," Sigma Chi president Chandin Lambert said. "We're being left out of major events on campus. ... SGA is supposed to be the most transparent organization on campus. Right now, it's the farthest from that."
SGA president Chris Wilkey said the response was preemptive. He said the idea of a secretary of greek relations was simply one he had tossed around and wanted to discuss, and that nothing was moving forward behind closed doors or without senate approval.
"People took what they thought we were doing and started making up what they thought was going to be done," Wilkey said. "People just decided it was the end of the world today, and we had to talk about it today, and that's fine because we got some great ideas out of it."
Wilkey said the slate will probably stop pursuing the creation of the position and will focus instead on expanding the duties or increasing its reliance on the senators who represent the three councils of greek life, senators whose duties some felt were threatened by the potential creation of the secretary position.
"When we decided to endorse a slate, that wasn't something we just decided to do one day," said Zach Hartley, the president of Interfraternity Council and its representative in SGA. "That was something we planned and we put effort into because we wanted to reach out and connect with student government and bring positive change to both our organizations."
Hartley described the meeting as a way of "working out the kinks" in the communication channels between SGA and the greek community.
Hartley was one of the many attendees and senators who were especially concerned about the possibility of extending discussion about the position into a closed meeting Thursday night. But parliamentarian Kevin Thurman announced at the end of senate that there would be no such meeting, and if any similar meetings took place in the future, they would be open to general student comment.
A more heated discussion arose later in the meeting, when senators got a chance to look at edited SGA bylaws. Senators took issue with a number of the changes, including the potential creation of a secretary of the environment.
Community and environmental affairs committee president Fayeanne Hurley said she saw no need for the position and said anything the executive slate needed to know about these issues they could ask her committee. Slate secretary Brittany Weaver said she had served as an SGA representative for Ball State's Council on the Environment in previous years and had been made aware that its administration wanted a position like this to exist with SGA.
Discussion about this position and general administration and communication within SGA was so heated that Closson had to keep a running list of senators who'd signaled they wanted to comment. The discussion period was extended three times and voting on the proposed bylaw changes was moved to next week. Voting on the next year's budget was also set for next week so senators would have time to review the proposal.
Though discussion was heated, president pro tempore Zeyne Guzeldereli said it had at least one good result: it revealed the mood in the senate and gave SGA fuel with which to move forward.
"We had this conversation to hear the different viewpoints but also to see an end goal to this position," he said. "That is the end goal - answering those questions and understanding them as senators."
Devan Filchak contributed to this story.