The United Student Government (USG) started its weekly legislative body meeting 15 minutes late after failing to meet quorum at the start of the assembly.

Quorum is the minimum number of members that are required to be at the meeting in order for the body to vote on legislation. For legislative body meetings, quorum is half of the voting members, plus one.

Vice President Alexa Lake said she did not feel confident making decisions without the correct number of people at the meeting.

“We want to make sure that we have enough people present so that if we make a decision, enough representatives are there to voice their opinion,” Lake said. “We don’t want a minority of people making a decision that affects the majority.”

A number of senators and President Jake Berlin were noticeably absent because they were required to be present at the faculty committee meetings.

According to Lake, the faculty committee assignments were done without her knowledge leading to the problem of not reaching quorum.

“The faculty have taken it upon themselves to assign senators and email them without consulting me, even though it is written in my job description,” Lake said. “I will be speaking with them about that soon.”

Due to the low senator attendance and the failure to meet quorum, President Pro-Tempore Grace Tyler Frank-Rempel moved for Vice President Lake to make a “call for quorum.” This motion passed. Vice President Lake then sent out an email to all senators who were attending faculty committee meetings, ordering them to report to the legislative body meeting or else their absence would be considered unexcused.

Once quorum was met, Lake moved to adopt a resolution that would excuse conservatory students from any Legislative Body Meetings that conflicted with conservatory commitments. The main point of the resolution would be to save time at the meetings so that individual senators did not have to be excused every week, but the resolution was named incorrectly and required more members than a quorum to be present in order to pass.

“There was a resolution that was on the agenda as a standing rule, which is an almost permanent motion just to save us time,” Lake said. “The version that was submitted changes a by-law, which would require further notice than was given and require a higher majority than what we have present today.”

During the Student Concerns Committee report, Senator Maleah Keller mentioned that she had talked to Chris Hill from Physical Plant about the potential mold problem on floor 10 of Lawrence Hall.

“I talked to Chris Hill and he said that after investigating their complaints he found 7 work orders of these issues since the start of the year,” Keller said. “All of the issues have been investigated and found to be mildew or missing caulk, not mold.”

Senator Jade Steele also mentioned that she was working with CulinArt to change the dining hall hours based on student schedules. She stated that after visiting the registrar’s office, she had obtained a master schedule of all classes being offered for next semester and each class’s enrollment. Vice President Lake offered her assistance in analyzing the data in order to present recommendations to CulinArt for dining facility hours for next semester. Senator Steele also mentioned that she was hoping to encourage Culinart to sell more vegan options.

The meeting agenda included a note about a referendum that will occur on Wednesday where the student body will vote via a form sent to their emails on the USG name change and adding graduate students to the organization.

The meeting wrapped up before 4 p.m.