Academic affairs committee of SGA will consider revising a bill for priority registration given to honor students after the bill dramatically failed on the floor of the Senate Thursday night.

Former academic affairs chair Matt Maxey and Senator Jennifer Ogg from the college of Humanities and Fine Arts were sponsors of the bill. Ogg was the representative of the bill.

Ogg explained to the council that the proposal on the floor applied to students in the Honors Seminar and the University Scholars program. The bill allowed for them to register early, during the same time period allotted for ninety-hour seniors. The foremost reason presented for enacting this bill was that UTM is behind most schools in the state when it comes to using priority registration as a recruitment tool for students of scholastic merit.

“I have not looked at all the schools in our state, but I have seen that UTK, UTC, and UTM all have priority registration,” Ogg stated. “It's just a matter of time before UTM has the same thing.”

Most controversy to the proposal was that the bill could possibly inhibit graduating seniors from getting the required classes that they needed if an honors student was allowed to register at the same time they were. Ogg stated several times that such situation was not likely. “At most there would be 300 students who would be eligible for priority registration,” Ogg said. “And, it's not like they are all the same major. They are spread out among the 80 majors that we have on campus,” Ogg added.

Furthermore, Ogg pointed out that the bill would not even directly affect graduating seniors. The wording of the bill is for registration to occur during the same time period allotted for ninety-hour seniors, which are not eligible for graduation.

Despite Ogg's attempts to sway the Senate, there was an overwhelming amount of “What if” questions that left the members hesitant to vote in the bill.

Among the questions brought up were if Harold O’Conner African American Scholarship would be considered under this proposal.

Brian Davis, campus observation chair, was one of the members who was unconvinced. “If we vote this in, next we will have athletes knocking on our door,” Davis said. When the motion was made for a vote, the bill failed with only two members being in approval.

Ogg said she was glad to see the students take such an interest in the topic. “I would like to see everyone take interest in a bill and bring it to Senate,” stated Ogg. “The decision that was just made is what the people on Senate want, so that’s the way it needs to be.”

Nikki Draper, vice president of SGA, stated that the discussion was good.

“I love it when bills are brought to the floor. This discussion was very healthy for us as a council. We just need to revise a few things so that everyone likes it,” Draper said.

In other SGA news, three new members were appointed to Senate positions. They were Marqueta Abraham, Elaine Rabey and Dusty Dean. Senator Kevin Anderson was selected to be the new academic affairs chair after Maxey has received an internship with Governor Bredesen.

SGA also took nominations to replace Justin Dyer, minority affairs chair.

Dyer received an internship at Disney. Nominations from the floor for the position were Danielle Neely and Candace Tate.
The executive council will report back with their recommendations for the position at the next Senate meeting.