While NIU students may have been enjoying their three-day weekends, the Student Association was still at work meeting for the first time this semester.

Starting the semester with its weekly Sunday meetings, the SA met with low attendance just making quorum at 19 out of 36 senators. It was at the end of last semester when senators Sam Fuqua, Fanon Perteet and Dominique Wheatley resigned with the removal of Kierra Jones.

However, with the loss of senators, Speaker of the Senate Matthew Venaas said there are already potential candidates that will be up for appointment at next week’s meeting.

“I’m confident that hopefully this time next month we should have a full senate, assuming no one else resigns,” Venaas said.

The SA had only one item on their agenda to address, making it the shortest meeting ever held by the SA at 20 minutes, Venaas said.

The item was the approval of a new student organization called Huskies United, a volunteer service group modeled after Virginia Tech’s Hokies United. Volunteers in the group act in community service holding bone-marrow screenings; giving out cookies, hugs and T-shirts; and showing support for other schools in times of tragedy.

After unanimous approval of the group by the senate, the group’s secretary Ryan Sego, a post-graduate student studying to be a geology teacher, was excited to hear the consensus.
“I feel overjoyed because we’ve waited months for this,” Sego said. “Despite all the huge projects we’ve done, we’re pretty unknown, and it’d be really nice to see Huskies United become a real force on campus.”

While the group is similar to NIU’s Northern Pact, which was created at the beginning of the school year, Huskies United Treasurer Purvin Patel, a senior accountancy major, said it is different as well.

“Northern Pact was just a one-time deal, but with Huskies United we’re looking to go on forever or as long as possible,” Patel said.

Even though the meeting was short-lived, Venaas outlined what the SA will address in the current semester, including SA elections in March, the appointment of new senators, the university’s environmental policies, the approval of more student organizations and other student organizations’ recent requests for supplemental funding.

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