As reported in last week’s edition of the Review (“Senate calls for internal reform,” TLR, March 5), there have been numerous calls for reform of the Associated Students of Linfield College Senate. We would like to express similar disappointment in the way Senate currently functions.
There seems to be a campus-wide disconnect between students and their representatives. Students are encouraged in e-mails sent by their senators to take concerns to them, but few do so. It is doubtful that many students even read these e-mails.
Students often receive e-mails from maybe three different senators at various times after Monday Senate meetings. These e-mails tend to include different information. Students who only read one of their Senate e-mails may be missing out on important information from others.
Perhaps senators should be more informative and detailed in their e-mails. Perhaps the whole process of informing students of Senate meetings could be streamlined by the secretary or vice president by sending one mass e-mail to all students.
It also appears that many senators do not even want to be at Senate meetings. We know some senators snuck out of Riley Hall after the last Senate meeting March 8 when they were required to attend the ASLC candidate debate. We would hope that those who represent us would take advantage of the opportunity to do so at these meetings.
Maybe holding senatorial elections within residence halls and clubs would be helpful. Last semester, most senatorial positions were simply given to those who felt like taking them. Elections would encourage students to compete for the opportunity to represent their peers. We would rather be represented by students who fought for the chance to do so as opposed to those who just wants to represent us, or just wants a fancy-sounding position to add to their résumés.
Senior Chris Norman, ASLC vice president and chairman of the Senate, also advocated for hall elections in the story from last week.
“They are more competitive, and they bring out the leaders of the group,” he said.
We believe senators should have more incentive to fill these important positions.
It would be unwise to place all the blame on senators, though. Linfield students in general do not seem to place much importance on Senate. Maybe they’re too busy to bother or too lazy to care. Whatever the cause, the problem is undeniable.
Students seem more content complaining about the problems they face on campus than do anything about them. It would appear that they do not realize that they have the ability to take their complaints to their senators and possibly have something done about them. Students need to be reminded and encouraged to bring the issues they care about to their senators because Senate is, or at least should be, the best place to implement change for the benefit of all students.
Senators have proposed numerous ideas about how to make meetings more efficient. Senior and editor-in-chief of The Linfield Review Dominic Baez wrote in the aforementioned Review article of how senior Duncan Reid, a senator and chairman of the Campus Improvement Committee, thought there should be fewer senators. We think a good idea may be to have just one or two senators represent all clubs on campus.
Sophomore Katie Patterson and junior Sarah Spranger both presented ideas for revamping Senate during the ASLC debates when they were running for ASLC vice president. Some of their ideas included having committees sit together, encouraging lively debate and having a PowerPoint presentation projected during Senate meetings.
We hope that the recently elected Patterson will work to implement all of these ideas as ASLC vice president.
It seems obvious to us that there are problems with Senate. We call not only on those in Senate to work for improvement but also on the general student population to place higher importance on Senate. Students should be the motivation for their senators to work harder for Linfield’s community. Without this motivation, Senate just becomes a name and a meeting to sit through every Monday evening.

-The Review Editorial Board