While Student Government Association assembly has tabled the idea of having a student senate for now, the issue will return in the fall.

Al Carroll, current SGA parliamentarian and president-elect for the 2011-12 school year, said he is unconvinced that the student senate format would be beneficial, but debate will continue.

Student senates at other schools include student members who represent other students in their grade level or an assigned group of students.

Butler’s current SGA format includes representatives from any student group or organization. Their constituencies are their group members.

No precise format has been discussed for a possible Butler student senate.

Also, no decision has been made as to whether or not a student senate would coexist along with SGA assembly or take its place.

Last year’s SGA evaluation committee and CPA approached Carroll with the idea after he was elected the 2011-12 SGA president. He said it came out of a sense that SGA members had too little to do.

He said developing a purpose for SGA and taking on greater problems this fall may remedy that issue. If it does not though, he said looking at a format could be beneficial to SGA’s function.

“It doesn’t matter if we have 20 voices or 200 if we don’t have a purpose,” Carroll said.

He said a change to assembly, whether it includes a student senate or not, is necessary.

“We’re not being effective, and we’re not working effectively in this body,” he said.

Either way, he said, the issue brings about important debate over the amount of voices in student government and the representation students desire.

“We’re trying to spark a fire in the student body and ask how much they care about these positions,” he said.

Carroll said the many heated arguments against a student senate and the abrupt tabling of the issue may have stemmed from representatives’ unwillingness to take up such a large issue three meetings from the end of the school year.

It is an issue that Carroll said should be taken up and drafted by assembly members and not the executive. Even so, he said there will be resistance.

“Change is a hard thing to do,” he said. “When you start talking about change, that’s where things start to heat up a bit.”

Most students in Student Government Association assembly rallied against an honor code but passed a similar measure, called the Student Ideals Statement, last semester.

The Student Ideals Statement will be placed in about 30 classrooms, spaces and lobbies around campus.

Senior Michael Tirman, a finance and music history major and member of the Council on Presidential Affairs who developed the language of the statement, said the controversy arose because students believed the word “code” implied consequences for not following the outlined values.

Some people also feared it would become a written contract between students and the university.

CPA decided instead to make the statement into something that highlights the values students hold, instead of making it something people believed they had to adhere to or “face the consequences.”

“We don’t need another rule,” Tirman said. “We need something that’s like a vision statement.”

The original idea for the ideals statement came from students who requested a values list or code. Tirman said one had been compiled in the past, but it was more convoluted and strict than the current form.

“CPA wanted to turn it into something less dogmatic in terms of rules and turn it into something more uplifting about who we are as Butler students and as an academic community,” Tirman said.

SGA representative Ashley Drees, a junior actuarial science major, said she and most representatives were against the original statement because it seemed like a contract. She said the debate was helpful and resulted in a statement she could support.

“People scrutinized every word, but it was good to see SGA that active in something,” she said. “People were actually getting engaged and involved.”

She said people agreed to the statement once it became more unifying than contractual.

“It’s kind of like a dictionary definition of how you would describe Butler University,” she said. “This is what our student body feels describes Butler.”

Other then being placed around campus, Tirman said the statement will be used in freshman orientation and hopefully make its way into the student handbook.

He agreed with Drees, and said it could also become a type of unifying mission statement for students.

“It’s not intrusive, it’s not something people have to abide by,” he said. “At the same time it distinguishes the student body as having this sense of purpose, whether or not we agree on specifics.”

Tirman said very few other institutions have such a policy, and he could see other schools following Butler’s lead and adopting similar statements.

The first hurdle, however, is gaining the support of students.

“Although SGA’s accepted it, there’s a whole other level of having the student body look at this and say, ‘Yes, that’s a reflection of how I feel,’” Tirman said.

Drees said she also sees the possibility of the statement going unrecognized by students.

“My biggest worry is what’s going to happen now,” she said. “It’s just going to fade away if nothing happens. It will just be something that got passed in 2011, and now we’re done.”

Butler University Student Government Association and Channel 13 WTHR teamedup on Sept. 22 to encourage students to vote and get involved in their community.

SGA held a voter registration drive and helped WTHR gain access to college students to get them to register to vote.

“SGA simply provided the man power that Channel 13 needed to make the event successful,” SGA President Chris Ring said.

Dean of Student Life Irene Stevens received the first contact from WTHR and forwarded the messages to SGA.

She said she thought it would be a great opportunity for SGA and Butler University to get involved in the community.

SGA is the governing student body on campus and found it important to get students interested in becoming part of the governing process on a higher level.

WTHR and SGA worked together and registered students who will hopefully vote in the upcoming election. Elections in November will determine one-third of the seats in the Senate and all of the seats in the House of Representatives.

Election day is Nov. 2. SGA does not have plans to hold another voter registration drive at the time, but Ring said he would be open to the idea.