The Associated Student Body Senate changed qualifications for vice presidential candidates, approved the yearly budget, swore in department nominations and discussed liaison reports at the first formal meeting of the 2025-26 school year on Tues., Sept. 2, in the Gertrude C. Ford Student Union.
The senate discussed and passed amendments to the ASB Constitution, including the one regarding qualifications for ASB Vice President.
In its most recent form, the ASB Constitution outlined that to be eligible for the vice president position a person must “… have served a minimum of one term as an elected member of the University of Mississippi Campus Senate or one term in the position of parliamentarian or legislation monitor on the executive council of a previous vice president.” This is outlined in Article 3, Section 2.
The current vice president, Walker Jacklin, did not meet the one-year term senate qualification when he ran for the position last spring.
After Jacklin was elected and accepted into the position in April, Chairman of the Committee on Governmental Operations Andrew Nichols and President Pro-Tempore Wesley Templet began writing an amendment that would adjust the qualifications for the vice president role, with input from the eight other ASB Committee Chair members and Attorney General Madison Waldrop. Templet was the only vice presidential candidate that met qualifications during the most recent election.
The amendment, titled SR 25-8, reads that eligible candidates for vice president must, “have served a minimum of one term in either the legislative branch or the president’s cabinet of the ASB prior to the time of taking office.”
Templet discussed the struggles he and Nichols faced when trying to find the right time to present the amendment for voting.
“This was a very rushed process already this semester, but it’s the best option we’ve had in the past few years,” Templet said. “To have orientation for senators, and to meet twice before the petitioning … this is the first time we’ve been able to make it work.”
Jacklin’s election was not the first instance in which a candidate did not meet the qualifications for a role. Current ASB President Jack Jones also did not meet the one-year term qualification for vice president when he was voted into that position during the 2024-25 election cycle. However, both he and Jacklin were voted into their positions by the student body and accepted by the ASB, despite not technically being eligible.
The debate on Tuesday night over the passing of this amendment was heated and lasted for over an hour.
Many ASB Senators had different viewpoints on what the right course of action was. Some took issue with the fact that the new wording of the qualifications presented would allow someone to run for vice president without prior experience working in the senate, despite the vice president’s role being to oversee senate proceedings.
Senator Corey Kingery voted against the amendment, concluding that the adjustment in qualifications for the vice presidency does not serve the best interest of the student body.
“Because the vice president presides over the senate, that role requires direct legislative experience,” Kingery said in a statement provided to The Daily Mississippian. “Cabinet service, while valuable, is administrative in nature and does not prepare someone to understand parliamentary procedure, legislative flow or the responsibilities of representing students through debate and amendments. Requiring legislative experience protects the integrity of our body, ensures that future presiding officers are prepared and keeps the process more democratic. In fact, our constitution required senate service until 2013, which shows there was once broad agreement on its necessity.”
Kingery went on to assert that the senate should be adding requirements to ensure competency across executive roles, not lowering them.
“Our senate deserves leaders who have earned their place through legislative experience — not just administrative appointment,” Kingery said.
Others thought that the wording did not offer enough clarification on what was designated as a “term” and how that would impact transfer students that want to participate in the ASB and in higher positions within the ASB hierarchy.
“We are a state dominated by junior colleges and two-year colleges,” Senator Lawson Campbell said during the period of questioning. “Students come here as juniors so their first opportunity to run for a senate seat is as a junior.”
Campbell then questioned how these transfer students, should they desire to run for higher office, would go about doing so.
In the end, the amendment passed with 36 affirmatives to 13 negatives. At next Tuesday’s formal senate, senators will vote on the amendment again, and if it passes a second time, it will then go through a petitioning process. Following that, it will be put on a ballot for the Ole Miss student body to vote on.
“I’m very happy that our senate decided to pass … I think we had a very active senate and a very productive senate,” Templet said. “We did a lot of good work.”
The senate also swore in executive departmental nominations for the year. Most notably, this correlated with the creation of a new position within the presidential department: the communications liaison to the division of student affairs.
This position will be responsible for “(facilitating) communications between (the ASB and the student body), especially when it comes to programming, social media and those kinds of things,” according to Jones.
All nominees were accepted but not without a lengthy period of questioning for each department — which is uncommon for the swearing-in process.
The meeting ended with a period of comment from the senate members. Many expressed disappointment over how the senate acted both during the debate for the constitutional amendment and also during the questioning period for the nominees that were presented earlier.
Once all the comments were heard, the senate was dismissed. They will meet again Tuesday, Sept. 9, where they will vote again on the amendment SR 25-8.
