By Paige Comeau ’26
Staff Writer
The first senate meeting of the academic year aimed to introduce new members to the mission and practices of the Student Government Association. Senate opened the Oct. 3 session in Blanchard Hall’s Great Room with the Mount Holyoke College land acknowledgment.
Following the reading of the agenda, the senate team introduced themselves. This sector of the Student Government Association includes Lillian Wade ’26, the chair of special interests, Serynn Nowlin ’25, the chair of halls and Julia Madonick ’24, the chair of the senate.
Senate then reviewed its three main goals for the 2023-2024 academic year. The first of these goals is community. With this, the senate hopes to work on increasing accessibility and harm reduction, as well as improving community involvement within SGA.
The second goal is transparency, as senate hopes to be more clear about what happens within SGA. The third and final goal is shared governance. This goal aims to improve the way that the student body works with SGA, as well as improve overall cooperation.
Next, for the benefit of newer members, the senate team examined the four pillars of senate. These four pillars are what the senate members aim to work on during the weekly meetings. The first pillar is open floor, a place and time for senators to voice their questions and concerns. The second pillar is legislation. The types of legislation senate passes include petitions, resolutions and memorandums.
Legislation like this is generally rare — often, it is a last resort for SGA to get things done. A much more common piece of legislation senate passes is a vote to ratify All Campus Elections. The third pillar of senate is Town Halls. These are senate meetings where staff and administration come together to answer questions and address concerns. The final pillar of senate is ad hoc committees. These committees are grouped by interest and work towards a shared goal, often writing petitions to address some sort of issue.
To round off the introductory portion of the evening, the senate team hosted a pop quiz — each table got into teams and competed in a senate-wide game of “Kahoot!”. The quiz included questions such as “Where is the best place to lodge an informal complaint?” and “What is the biggest responsibility of a senator?”
To conclude the meeting, SGA introduced the senate’s first official task: ratifying the All Campus Elections results. Although the class of 2027 met the quorum, the class of 2026 did not, meaning that the election had to be ratified by senate.
Quorum is the minimum number of votes necessary to conclude an election as valid — at the College, quorum is 50% of the eligible voters plus 1. After a brief survey, senate ratified the results, which were emailed the next day, on Oct. 4.
The winners of the 2026 election included Tiko Dolidze ‘26 and Emmy McCormack ‘26 as Social Chairs and Nathania Amadi ‘26 as Senator. The winners of the 2027 Election included Elle Rood ‘27 as President, Brie Foster ‘27 as Vice President, Anna Neubauer ‘27 as Secretary, Hana Atiq ‘27 as Treasurer, Momo Yang ‘27 and Keira Gillin ‘27 as Social Chairs, and Kit Moore ‘27 as Senator.
The senate team then took questions before concluding the meeting.