Student Senate will swear in new senators for the semester at their meeting at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the Arcola-Tuscola Room of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

Committee chair positions will also be announced along with which committee each senator is on.

This is the first official meeting of the Student Senate after last week’s orientation.

At orientation, senators took personality tests, which will be used to place the senators in committees.

Maralea Negron, speaker of the senate, said the tests also helped senators learn more about each other.

The senate will only be voting on giving one of the senators a leave of absence.

The senator in question is leaving for personal reasons but wants to still hold their position when they come back.

In the past, the speaker of the senate usually approves or denies leaves of absence.

However, since this is Negron’s first time dealing with this situation, she thought the senate should vote on it in accordance with the senate bylaws.

This semester, Negron said she wants to focus on getting committee projects going faster.

According to Negron, the senate was made up almost completely of new senators last fall, but she thinks it retained more senators in the transition from the fall to spring semesters.

More than half of the committee chairs this spring are returning senators, unlike the large number of rookie senators acting as new chairs last semester.

Negron said having experienced committee chairs helps with the flow of things because returning senators know that they need timelines, dates and set-in-stone plans in order for events to happen.

Negron also wants to work on retaining more senators and working with the internal affairs committee chair.

“Students want to get involved, so they’re like ‘I want to do student government,’ and they don’t realize how much of a time commitment it is,” Negron said.

Negron said student government is not just going to weekly meetings.

“We’re the decision making body, so you have to be very involved in student government,” Negron said. “You have to put your all into the organization, if not it’s just not a good fit for you.”

She said student government is an organization where people get what they put in.

Negron also wants to have more than one bonding event for senators this year.

Since the student senate still has open seats, Negron said they would probably use appointments to fill these positions.

“We don’t want to just appoint people randomly,” Negron said. “If we just appoint people randomly they just get thrown in.”

Cassie Buchman can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected]