The Associated Student Body Senate unanimously passed a resolution to form a task force that will assess the state of honors societies on campus on Tuesday night.
The resolution, authored by Sen. Nick Weaver, will “establish a task force made up university students, members of ASB and members of the honors college” to inform students about the various honors societies on campus.
“What that task force will be designed to do would be to evaluate the state of honors societies on this campus — figure out what they do, which ones are registered organizations on this campus, how to join and how much they cost,” Weaver said.
The Senate hopes to have the findings of this task force published on the honors college website, the ASB website and the university website.
Sens. Charlotte Shackelford and Corbin Fox each spoke in affirmation of the resolution.
“I feel like I get a lot of phony emails about honors societies, and I just don’t even know which ones to trust,” Shackelford said. “I think this will help clear the air and save students money so that they’re not paying $125 to join a fake honors society that gives no benefit to them.”
The Senate Committee on Academics has already decided that the task force will be an open opportunity initiative, meaning that any students or professors who would like to serve will be welcome to join.
The Senate also unanimously approved the nominations of a new legislative council and seven legislative aides. The ASB Legislative Council will now be comprised of Eleanor Atkinson as legislation monitor and Zoe Storck as Senate liaison.
“I really want to be involved, and I think that the position is really great because it requires the communicative aspect between the people and ASB as a whole, which I think is really important … it’s something that we’re doing really, really well this year,” said Storck.
Atkinson also expressed her excitement to take on her new position in ASB.
“I feel like I’m a very organized person, and I love to be involved in things like this,” she said. “I just want to be more involved in campus events and knowing what’s going on.”
The seven students approved to join the ASB as legislative aides are Nicholas Diconsiglio, Spencer Johns, Olivia Maurer, Beck Guidry, Morgan Atkins, Erin Bowens and Ella Endorf.
Legislative aides are first-year students at Ole Miss who are assigned to each Senate committee to help come up with ideas, research legislation and take notes on every informal Senate meeting, which include committee meetings.
“I was interested in this because I see ASB as a pinnacle of servant leadership, and the fact that all of (the Senators) take time to sacrifice and do all of this for the student body to show how much (they) all care about the university means a lot to me. So I thought it would be really cool to get to see it up close,” Atkins said.
All of the aides share past experience in their high school student governments, and they all said that they are excited to participate in legislation on a larger scale.
“My student government at my high school was pretty much a puppet. It didn’t do anything at all except for what the sponsor wanted it to do,” Johns said. “I really wanted to be involved in a student organization that actually had a chance to do something meaningful and productive for the people it serves.”
