Jamie Plummer
The Student Senate is the largest branch of Student Government at NC State, with 64 senators proportionally representing each college within the university. Its president leads the Senate and is charged with a number of responsibilities by the Student Body Constitution.
The Technician sat down with Student Senate President Jamie Plummer, a senior studying polymer and color chemistry, and asked what exactly these responsibilities were, how she went about handling them and how students can become more involved in the legislative process.
What exactly does your job entail/what are your duties of office?
According to our statutes, my duties are to schedule and lead the biweekly Senate meetings, help coordinate the Student Senate Retreat, forward all passed legislation to the student body president and appoint the chairs for the Senate Committees. In the event of a tie in voting on a piece of legislation, I can serve as a tiebreaker. Beyond that, each Senate president has some discretion with their duties and responsibilities. I plan to support the senators so that they can best advocate for the needs of the students. After listening to debate on matters within Senate meetings, I serve as an advocate for these opinions and insights, and voice them in larger settings with faculty and staff.
Why did you decide to run for this position?
I enjoyed serving as a senator for the past two sessions and found my favorite part to be serving on a University Standing Committee. In this setting, students are given the opportunity to be a part of a committee and can openly discuss matters with university administrators, faculty and staff. It is important for students to be involved in the decisions that directly impact our student body, and I found that serving as the Senate president would continue to allow me to voice the needs of students.
What are your plans/goals for this session and how do you plan on accomplishing them as president?
Unlike the student body president, my role is not to develop and implement policy. Based on that, I intend to work with the Senate to solicit feedback from the student body and make sure that its views and suggestions receive fair consideration during Senate debate. For example, there is currently a proposal regarding the Free Expression Tunnel that is being considered, and we need feedback from the student body.
We need to hear more from students. I got involved with Senate through hearing about it at my college council meeting. I definitely place an emphasis on attending college council meetings and talking to students within each delegation. Each student is faced with unique issues based on their experiences, so reaching out and hearing more perspectives can only help us to create legislation that aids our diverse student population.
Another opportunity is the establishment of good transition documents. The university is a very transient place, so year-to-year, it can be easy for discussions and potential changes in university policies to be forgotten as students change roles and graduate. I want to ensure that there is follow-through so that we don’t have to continue to revisit unresolved discussions that took place years ago. When the suggestion of adding a class syllabus to MyPack for students to view when registering for a course was brought to a university committee, a faculty member added that this request had been brought forward over 10 years ago and never implemented.
Have you already accomplished or started working on those goals/plans?
We’re encouraging senators to get involved from the beginning of the year to establish relationships with their colleges.
We had a Student Government retreat in which each senator generated potential bill ideas and went through and defined next steps to start creating bills for consideration in this session.
We have our first formal meeting this Wednesday, Aug. 31, where we will be discussing the Free Expression Tunnel plaque and confirming new Board of Elections members.
What do students need to know/understand about Student Senate?
All of our meetings are open to the public. We meet every other Wednesday at 7:30 on the fourth floor of Talley in the Senate Chambers. This is an opportunity for them to see exactly what is being discussed and see how their representatives are best advocating for them. They can also see the legislation in the SG Google Docs folder accessible on the website.
If you have specific concerns that your college is facing, you can email your specific senators, or even fill out the What To Fix form on the Student Government website: https://sg.students.ncsu.edu/.
Although we have a lot of bill ideas, not everything comes to fruition. This isn’t for a lack of hard work. There is a lot of research that happens within committees that can sometimes stop legislation from making it to the floor or from passing.
How can students become more involved in Student Senate and Student Government in general?
Fall elections are about to take place, and the intent to run forms are due on Tuesday. If you are interested in being a senator, look at the open seats which include 10 first-year undergrad, two graduate seats, CALS, DASA, CNR, COS, Design and a Textiles seat.
If you don’t make it through elections, there are some appointments made during the year and, you can email ssp@ncsu.edu to begin that application process.
There are also the executive and judicial branches of government. So students can be a part of the executive team or conduct board hearings. There’s also the Office of the Treasury that deals with the finances and the Board of Elections that facilitate and run all of the Student Government elections. There are various roles within Student Government, and if you look around the website, you will likely be able to figure out where your interests fit best.
What is your favorite thing about your job?
I really like interacting with people from all over the university. I think oftentimes we assume that the people making decisions are simply serving their own interests, but it seems that often it’s just that they have a different perspective. So I highly value the feedback we get from students and senators so that we can present the student perspective and decisions can be made in the best interest of the students and the university.