On Saturday April 24 the inaugural meeting of the newly formed Senate of the Claremont Colleges was held in Claremont McKenna’s new Roberts North building. It was an event marked more by expectations for the future than solutions in the present, as the student representative body will not meet again until next fall.

As beginnings go, the SCC’s was a decidedly inauspicious one. While numerous delegates from the other colleges arrived at 4:15pm to begin proceedings, no representatives from Scripps College attended the meeting. Without a quorum, the Senate was restricted from voting on any motions.

Not hindered by the setback, those present began an open floor discussion on the direction of the body that many present had labored yearlong to form. Questions of protocol and clerical procedures that will make up the body’s by-laws were handed down to next year’s representatives.

"I think it went pretty well–better than anticipated. It’s unfortunate that we don’t have more time this year, because we didn’t really get anything done," commented ASPC President and delegate Andrew Sheppard ’99.

Sheppard has said that once functional, the ability to form sub-committees is the "primary purpose" of the SCC. Sheppard and the other Pomona delegates present, Commissioner of Campus Events-elect Tamara Chellam ’00 and President for the 1999-2000 academic year Richard Park ’00, actively participated in the introduction of sub-committee proposals for consideration.

"The sub-committee which will have the most immediate impact for students at all the colleges is the Traffic Committee," said Sheppard after the meeting. This ad-hoc committee found wide support from all delegations, except that of Harvey Mudd College, which was unconvinced of the proposal’s necessity. Once formed, the committee would attempt to accomplish such goals as limiting student parking tickets and creating a parking window decal valid at all the campuses.

Also discussed was the formation of three standing committees: a Social Affairs Committee, a 5-C Course Review Committee, and a Food Committee. The most lively and involved debate occurred after Sheppard proposed the Food Committee as a body that could monitor the efficacy of Aramark managers. A consensus was reached that the Senate would support Aramark workers ability to judge their employers, but would not endorse the actions of the Worker Support Committee.

The Social Affairs Committee, explained Chellam, would limit and rectify any event-scheduling conflicts among the separate colleges. Assembling and distributing a compilation course review booklet every semester will be the task of the 5-C Course Review Committee.

Sheppard worked throughout the year with representatives of the five colleges’ separate student governments to draft the Senate’s constitution. After being approved by four of those governments, the final draft of the constitution was ratified by a slim majority of the HMC student body.

During the process, Sheppard repeatedly reported that the HMC student government diverged from the others working on the constitution with concerns to its purpose and structure. Also, the HMC delegate was repeatedly at odds with the majority present at the meeting on Saturday.

HMC delegate James Benham admitted after the meeting that there is "not a whole lot" of support for the SCC in the HMC student government or students at large. Benham says he personally is approaching the Senate with "cautious optimism."

During the Senate’s first meeting, Benham made clear to all the delegations that HMC would be very opposed to any budget requests from the inter-collegiate body. The Senate has no funds of its own to operate with, and cannot even function without grants from the five schools.

Benham has said that the Senate lacks important issues to deal with, and that this, coupled with student apathy (most notably in his own school, he admits) makes the future of the Senate uncertain. "I don’t know. There’s potential [for the Senate], but it remains to be seen what it will do," he concluded.

In the future, the Pomona delegation to the SCC will include the ASPC president and two other Senators elected by him/her on a per meeting basis.