Senate Speaker

Gmail/Drive/etc. asuwssch Password: Lukas4Speaker! ( Reset this by reaching out to the new ASUW Systems Administrator, Ava. They can be reached via asuwtech@uw.edu.

Mailchimp: asuwssch@uw.edu Password: Senate2k17! (Vanessa might of changed it but MC usually is the only one who uses it anyways)

HUBRes: This can be accessed with your asuwssch NetID. I didn’t use this site at all this past year since we didn’t request any in-person rooms, but this process will also be explained during Employee Orientation (or at least it was this year so I expect it to be as it’s very important). You’ll very likely use this for steering and for any extra bonding events hosted in the HUB like board games night. More info below! And reach out to Rene with any questions about this.

Senate website: Use your professional UW NetID info (asuwssch@uw.edu).

Slack: asuwssch@uw.edu and whatever password you choose, so reset the Speaker asuwssch password first if you’d like!!

• Senate leadership is now paid over the summer! You specifically were allocated 3 hours a week over 4 weeks. Most of the things below aren’t needed until August/September and can be done remotely. 
• The Senate website is complete! This is the first year of it being operational so it is not perfect. I would spend some time in the summer working with the vice speaker to understand how it works from a user and admin perspective. I will train you on the important aspects for speaker but normally the vice-speaker is the one who does most of the website operations. The speaker is in charge of the tools and resources on it so take a look at what is missing or how it can improve. If you want to change anything on it, ASUW has a website person who should be able to do it. This year, that position didn’t really exist and was overworked so we had to go through a professional developer for any updates. You can talk to Rene or the communications director if you want to change the website beyond the capabilities of wordpress.
  • Kevin Shotwell is a former senator from a long time ago and said he has in his possession thousands of pieces of legislation and records from years’ past digitally in his possession and would send them to me. He never did so please request this from his again. Email kesh@serverk. Com. He has his own job and family so he is a bit busy and has no requirement to do anything for ASUW anymore so just keep that in mind if you want to try and pursue that.
• Read not only the Senate Bylaws, but the Senate Rules and the ASUW Constitution
  • I cannot stress this aspect enough! All together, ASUW probably has 300+ pages of governing documents and policies that all need to be followed. This is a lot to know and you aren’t required to know it by heart. I would recommend starting with reading the senate bylaws and rules over and over again to understand them. You are the speaker and people will rely on your knowledge during meetings for them to run effectively. Also, knowing these documents generally really helps you know what’s NOT in them. I wish someone had told me that there are things genuinely up to your interpretation of what the spirit of our governing documents would demand.
  • Also, the constitution better lays out what the relationship with our Board Rep. Director of Internal Policy could be, which was not at its full potential this year. For example working more closely with GPSS through them.
• Read through those Robert’s Rules books and don’t be afraid to use Google, which has shockingly specific answers to Robert’s Rules questions
  • There are going to be situations that don’t have clear answers in our governing documents. This is when you use roberts rules and find what is the correct step forward. Rene gave this advice to Lukas last year so I will keep it: Use whatever rules in your toolbox you need to reflect the will of the body and you’ll be okay.
• Reach out to your fellow employees over the summer and start the group chats and such sooner rather than later
• Start thinking about and planning for a Dawg Daze event or two.
  • This is one of those topics you should cover over the summer with senate leadership. A couple of years ago they did slime making which was apparently a total hit and really fun to attract people to the tabling.Try to split up tabling between leadership as much as possible. We have extra supplies in the office if you want to repeat this for even cheaper than last year! This past year we reserved a table with ASUW and used the big chalk board in the office to attract people. We ended up getting a ton of people stopping by and some senators we found through this event! Registration is needed by September 1st so keep an eye out for that and have the membership coordinator complete it.
• Make sure senators know they can submit legislation over the summer, and post on the FB Group, Instagram etc. to let them know.
• Schedule your room for Senate as early as August or even July. This should be done by the vice-speaker but in coordination with leadership. Keep in mind accessibility in all conversations for room selections because a lot of rooms are inaccessible on campus. My personal recommendation is SAV 260 and Miller 301. Having it on the quad is nice because it’s centrally located and not far from bus stops for commuters. I would also make sure you reserve the room until 7:30 in case some meetings go long.
• You will have to write a welcome letter to senators that will be included in their introduction packets. No one warned me about this but the MC is meant to collect it from you and put it in the packet. I did some digging in the drive and found that past speakers copy and paste the letter and then add/delete what they want. If you look through the drive you will see what I mean. 
• Last couple of things to do over the summer is updating the welcome packet and scheduling a time for steering. Feel free to meet with leadership and go over the welcome packet and edit things or add/remove things. Depends on what you think will be helpful for new senators. Around early September, send a welcome email to chairs and a when2meet to find what time works best for weekly steering meetings. It was super difficult to find a time that works for everyone so try to find a time that works for a majority of committee chairs. It is important that all of leadership can make it so keep that in mind.

– Edit and send out the Steering Agenda to Steering, along with the Senate Agenda that will be linked in the Steering Agenda, then follow that agenda when you chair the meeting. It will be the Vice Speaker’s job to create the templates of the agendas for both Steering and Senate weeks in advance so that they are cleared with the Public Records Office. Then you will go ahead and edit them for content, such as which legislation goes where, but this can be collaborative if you’d like. Remember that last year we had a somewhat needless OA that required the Steering and Senate agendas be physically posted outside HUB 121, so as you transition back in-person, either you or your coworkers should follow that. Also, OPMA requires that both agendas must be posted on the Senate website at least 24 hours in advance of the Senate AND Steering meetings, so after Senate, work with the Vice Speaker to finalize the Steering agenda for the following day. It helps when the Vice Speaker creates all of the agendas months in advance and then you can fill them in with the appropriate pieces of legislation. Some advice for editing and creating agendas

• Write which legislation is in which committee on the agenda, otherwise chairs themselves may forget.
• Think about timing needs (like perhaps a recess if there is a ton on the agenda or a time stamp for adjournment) before Steering, and come with some proposed edits already suggested on the Google Doc
• Know that something inevitably changes right before the Senate meeting like a forum asking to go earlier or later. I just prepared myself to make those edits or proposed edits to be voted on usually up until the last 30 minutes before Senate. You have some flexibility with forum time.
  • On this note: I advise requiring presenters to send slides by 4PM on Tuesdays because people will sometimes even send it to you during Senate and that eats up Senate time to set up slides rather than just have ready linked on your agenda. This is hard to enforce, but try to make them follow it; and it gets confusing because the Vice Speaker organizes the forums and shares screen, so have the presenter send it to both you and Sarah.
• Make sure to share editing access to the Senate Agenda for each week with the Vice Speaker so they are able to send it to public records and edit the agenda during the meeting at the podium.

The Membership Coordinator and External Affairs Intern handle sending out the agenda to folks and that system seemed to work pretty well. Make sure to have whoever sends this out communicate with you about if anything has changed with agenda since the Steering meeting so the email outlines what is most likely to go down.

– Ensure that the follow-up email gets sent out by the Membership Coordinator sometime between Senate meetings. These can be sent out between immediately after Senate to Sunday afternoon. I recommend like Wednesday or Thursday, but it’s not a hard and fast rule. Make sure that they include results of votes and elections, any of the announcements given during the meeting, as well as ASUW events going on in the near future (I always liked to send the Slack messages of events from the General and Events channels in the ASUW Slack, and any emails I received about UW events, to the Membership Coordinator.

-Work on Follow-Up after the Board Bills of the resolutions pass (after Board on Thursday). These don’t have to be done right away unless stated otherwise by the sponsors, try not to procrastinate on them though as it’s easy for this to build up. There are resources in the drive for contacts for common people items are sent to. I will also be doing some last minute resolution follow up soon so you should see a good email template to follow, but here is one, too. Perhaps in the future this is something that could be delegated to CRFU so they can do the most effective follow up and responses.

-Run legislation writing workshops! These are highly useful for building community, teaching, and getting people to work together, especially in-person!!! The physical Senate office should be a place for all senators to feel comfortable in, and these are the times to really bond the Senate community.

-Meet with interns. But!! I will say, we found that having only one intern, the External Affairs Intern, rather than two–the Internal Affairs Intern, worked best. You are going to be stretched thin, and the Internal Affairs Intern position seemed to be too much for Senate leadership to handle, especially for me. Your choice though! And by the way, the past couple years the External Affairs Intern almost exclusively met with the Membership Coordinator.

-Attend Board if you are interested. Not mandatory, of course, because Sarah will have Senate covered.

-This is a general schedule to follow:

Monday: Generally my favorite day to get uninterrupted work time. This is when I catch up on anything I didn’t get done the week before as well as plan the week. This means looking ahead at the senate agenda and making sure you have everything you need. Monday is also the day we had our senate leadership meetings. It’s a good day for that because you can coordinate the week as well as go over the senate agenda together. If we have elections for liaisons, this is usually the day when I reach out to the person who requested one and ask for a question that senators will answer. If you can do this earlier even better because sometimes people don’t respond. Senate leadership Meetings this day. Legislation has to be submitted by 5pm on Monday.

Tuesday: Prep for the meeting because there are almost always last minute changes. Check in with the Vice Speaker that you are on the same page about how things will be run, and check in with the Membership Coordinator about any new senators. (Try to introduce yourself when you see them collect their name tag in the front of the room!) 

Wednesday or Thursday are the best days for Steering tbh because the last senate meeting is fresh in people’s minds. Mondays don’t work because we need to have the agenda before the weekend (1 or 2 business days beforehand) for our Tuesday meetings per Washington State law. We had two quarters of meetings on Fridays and honestly it wasn’t that bad if you have hybrid options. I would recommend not asking steering their opinion of this time as someone will almost ALWAYS not be able to make it and it will make them feel like they’re not valued. If a lot of chairs are commuters you could always have a discussion about making steering virtual.

Wednesday or Thursday: Depending when steering is, you are supposed to send them the steering agenda 24 hours in advance. That means you will create the steering agenda as well as the following senate agenda (to be approved by steering) either Wednesday or Thursday. We also tried to keep our legislation writing workshops on one of these days because we didn’t get good attendance when we had it on Fridays (the weekend mindset). 

Fridays are a perfect time to start resolution follow-up after the resolutions pass the ASUW Board of Directors. Admin won’t have the legislation until you send it off so I tried to do it as quickly as possible. 

Every Quarter

You will need to reserve a room for both Senate and Steering each quarter. Collaborate with Mario on this since he reserves it. This is information on how to do it but Sarah did it this year. I’ll keep it just in case Mario can’t for some reason. For Senate, email times@uw.edu. I think reservations open in September. Check my gmail’s history with that email for past emails for you to use as templates as they require specific information in the email  – if you don’t include all the necessary information, they won’t tell you and won’t book your room so make sure it’s there! Always be sure to include many options for your favorite rooms. You know this, but always consider accessibility for someone in a wheelchair to also be able to speak on the floor of senate. And ask Rene for any help with this, though she may suggest rooms that Senate has used in the past but are physically inaccessible. She really likes Gowen 301 but that room isn’t accessible.

-For Steering, you will need to reserve a space every quarter. Again, Mario will handle this but I will leave it just in case. You’ll want to go to the hubres page, which is http://hubres.uw.edu/hubres/    (more info provided during ASUW Employee Orientation) To access it, you’ll have to log in. You’ll go to “My reservations” and a reservation template, and search the HUB Board room for the times and repetitions that you want for that room (although if you want a different room in the HUB, you’ll need to unclick that box and you’ll want a small-sized room). Some times might be taken so you’ll get confirmations for 6/10 reservations or something – this just means you either find another room in the hub for those times You get weekly free rooms in the HUB for Steering meetings in small rooms. We really liked the room Board is in and recommend it.

-Reschedule legislation writing workshops and potentially office meetings based on everyone’s new schedules. When2Meets for all is usually best.

-Create quarterly reflection google forms to send out. A new thing I did this year was include questions about accessibility and how we can improve. We did a reflection form after Fall and Winter quarter and used that information for employee evaluations that are required each quarter for you to conduct. Fall quarter we got a ton of responses but winter quarter not so much. I would recommend doing it second to last week of quarter and have chairs give time during committee meetings. If you still don’t have a lot of responses, for the last meeting I would use your speaker’s report and ask everyone to spend a couple minutes and fill it out before moving on. Emphasize that they should try to write at least something for each question.

-You will have to do some sort of employee evaluation and budget reflection at the start or end of most quarters. This is a bylaw requirement that Speaker do employee evaluations for VS, MC, Membership Coordinator, and all committee chairs. For committee chairs, I recommend asking to meet around week 4 of each quarter since it is extra work for them and you want to be accommodating. Gently remind them each week during speakers report at steering until all six have had meetings. This strategy worked great for everyone. In terms of committee chair evaluations, gear it more as a conversation. Most of the time there isn’t really anything to critique so have a one on one conversation about senate. Some questions I asked were: what’s been most challenging for you, what goals do you have for next quarter, do you think anything can improve about senate, how can I better support you moving forward, etc. The leadership ones I used the survey results to find if anything concerning came up. I would then talk about what ideas they might want to pursue. For example, MC could look at helping committee chairs do committee bondings or VS can look at helping change something in the bylaws.

-Continue different trainings on things like Robert’s Rules year-round if it feels appropriate. You should train committee chairs at the first steering meeting. A presentation should be in the drive that I used. I also found it helpful to do a refresher presentation at the beginning of spring quarter.

-Attend senate bonding and know that it can count as your paid hours! It is important people know who is leading senate and that you are just a student like them. 

-Work with Mario to brainstorm who you want to give forums in senate the quarter before you want them, then reach out to them using the email template searchable in the emails. Know that for public officials, like Rep. Frank Chopp or Pres. Ana Mari Cauce, you will need to individually fill out their request for meeting forms on their websites. This is very time consuming but worth it! Mario will be in charge of scheduling forums but the speaker handles the higher up administration like politicians or Provost Richards. Some examples of great people to consider are:

• Student Regent, President Cauce, Board of Directors members, VP of Student Life Denzil Suite, VP of Diversity Rickey Hall, City Council Member (for UW) Alex Pedersen, or the new Mayor of Seattle. 

Remember that some people like Cauce or a local politician most likely need a month’s notice. Also, you cannot invite politicians if they are currently running for office. This is important because it will be a midterm election year.

-The bylaws state that you are meant to meet with liaisons quarterly. This can be redundant and extremely time consuming seeing that there are like 20+ liaisons. I met with liaisons only once, in winter quarter, and split them up with leadership. I highly recommend you do this Fall quarter and then just meet once with any other liaisons that are elected. It is important to communicate the requirements our bylaws have for liaisons and the fact that if they can’t attend a meeting the speaker must be told because you are the only one who can fill in. The bylaws are there for a reason when it comes to Liaisons. Remember, they are Senate’s representative so whatever they say or communicate the parties will believe that is what everyone in senate believes. 

-Ensure Oversight and CRFU gives a report each quarter. Consider doing liaison of the month as a recognition award. You may have to wrangle some of the liaisons alongside the Oversight Chair if they aren’t responding to their reminder emails about reports. I had to do this a lot so make sure oversight and CRFU start with plenty of time to account for this.

-My first year we had recommended seating charts for the different committees in the room you’re in. This has not always existed, but it could help with ensuring community building and friendships. 

-Consider making a rough draft of notes to your successor/transition docs that you can add to throughout the year! I did not do this very well and it fucked me hahaha

–In the job description it probably says to meet with your adviser once a month. Do, don’t, whatever you think is useful. I met with Rene at least once a month throughout the year but she is really busy since she runs SAO. She is of course a go-to for anything not answered by the governing documents. She also helped me throughout some personal stuff and budgetary concerns for updating the Senate website. People sometimes shit talk SAO but it is important to remember that they are there to help and support. They give advice but you do not have to take it and they tell you that. Rene has so much wisdom when it comes to life, UW, and ASUW.

Fall

– Begin coordinating membership on the new site, starting the first day of September I believe. The site is set to reset the past year’s membership on September 1st each year, so assist the Membership Coordinator in doing this (if they need help). Remember that everyone needs to collect constituents again and re-register. 

-Rene will get you a gavel and will probably coordinate this. It’s really cool but in my opinion it is a decoration. I used it a couple of meetings and it started to break :(. There is a great gavel in the drawer of the desk that is free to use so I suggest using that one. 

-For Fall, it’s important that you help out the MC with the recruitment process, whether that’s tabling at the RSO fair, putting up posters around campus, emailing UW communities or departments, or anything else they need help with. I recommend reserving a spot for you at Dawg Daze, so you can plan that as you want with your team. The link is here: uwdawgdaze.com. Submissions will close on September 1, 2022 at 5PM PST. I didn’t reserve for you because I know you might want to switch it up with what the event looks like. Consider recruitment a large part of the job for the first couple weeks of school and fall quarter overall. Make sure to reach out to JCC and Legacy Groups so that protected seats are filled- the MC can help you with this. Also, with RSO representation, you can give presentations at RSO meetings during these early weeks of fall for recruitment as well. Consider going to the RSO fair to advertise table by table to RSOs there. We also presented at large classrooms by having the MC reach out to professors, most were ok with it but remember to keep it super short since it is class time. Also, we presented at IFC, Panhellenic, and Hall Councils which I suggest as well. 

-Make sure committee chairs have a means of communicating with their committee either by email set up, Slack group chat, Facebook Messenger group chat, or other. Talk to them about how to make decisions in committee such as an informal version of Robert’s Rules. Encourage them to host community-building events. Remind them to elect Vice Chairs ASAP, and encourage them to use Vice Chairs to take informal committee meeting minutes. Welcome and maybe give light training to Vice Chairs as well.

-Begin with a resolution on cake to practice (and actually get the cake)! This is a practice resolution but should be treated as a real one because at the end of the year we do get cake! The MC will take care of cake scheduling with Rene around Spring Quarter. We had some issues with the baker used in the past so maybe consider other options.

-Schedule a photo shoot with OComm for your office and update the website with new photos as well as updated dates and times for meetings (maybe delegate to MC).

-Get promotional material created or edited by OComm out there ASAP by putting in a design request during ASUW orientation. Be sure to enter any design requests like a poster with a change of location in early enough to attract new students to meetings. This can also be delegated to MC. And potentially use the colorful poster we already have and just edit it.

-Begin work to hire an intern through OOI. Work with your office team to determine what roles interns could best fill and who would like to oversee them. Hiring forms to submit to OOI are in the drive. They can be a HUGE aid to the office, but also remember your own personal capacities. The MC usually spear heads this because the past few years we have only hired an external affairs interns that helps promote senate. There was a time when senate had an internal affairs intern but honestly I can’t think of many things they could do that isn’t our job description so we passed on it.

-Also for fall, help the Vice Speaker organize and run a couple “How to Senate” forums which should include a hefty lesson on parliamentary procedure and how it’s used in Senate.  Kahoot was used in the past so that is an idea. This is something we found valuable repeating quarterly. In the past, welcome packets were printed and super costly. We decided to do electronic ones and just print name placards. That means you can redirect printing funds for more important things like programming and ensure senators only need to remember their name placard.

-In the past, we had a senator sandbox that senators could write what legislation they were working on to avoid people working on similar things and provide opportunities for senators to collaborate. This wasn’t used as much but maybe during Fall Quarter you want to push this idea. It’s on the senate website so take a look and decide.

-I would also take the opportunity during fall quarter to check in on old resolutions, maybe working with CRFU to figure out which pieces of legislation from last year need some extra push. 

-Elect the remaining liaisons in the early meetings of fall quarter. Be proactive about working with Oversight Chair to know in advance which liaisons will need electing first or later. This was something I wish someone had told me. Usually it’s the Environmental Stewardship Committee, Personnel committee, JCC, student technology fee, HUB Board of Representatives, Transfer Student Advisory Committee. Reach out to the chairs of those committees to find when they need a liaison by because it is supposed to be a two week process.

-Prepare for the fiasco of the Legislative Agenda. Make sure senators know how important this is and work with Mario to ensure Board and Senate work together on this if needed. I sent an email inviting board members to senate to participate fully on it even though it goes to board to make sure the process went quickly.

-Have every Board member in at least once to introduce themselves and talk about their work so senators can be sent to them about legislation.

Winter

-Winter is the quarter to push legislation writing, even more than fall.

-Winter is a good time for readjusting goals (especially based off feedback) within the senate office and within steering. 

-Check in with CRFU in particular to make sure they can do real follow up on the things passed in Fall.

-For internal ASUW stuff, the end of winter quarter will include the finance and budget review (where we got cart-captioning funding and summer pay), along with the personnel change request process which reexamines job descriptions. If there are things you want to change in regards to budget or job descriptions, this will be your time to make those changes– whether that is hours changes or changing duties of the team. The due dates are in February or so. It is a lot of work and the Speaker has to do it for everyone in Senate so plan well. Some things people spoke about amending was adding hours for chairs. It is a bit complicated and happy to talk more about that.

Spring

-Spring is the time to push efficient conversations in Senate. You should have a good backlog of legislation if your winter efforts paid off, so now it’s time to get everything passed or failed. You’re the facilitator of the conversations, so make sure they’re getting somewhere and not just circling around the same ideas.

-Be sure to teach Senate how elections will work, there is already a presentation in the drive. 

-Also make sure to plug ASUW elections and ASUW jobs! Try to start plugging Senate leadership when Board elections come up so people have some time to consider running. Something you can consider doing again is posting our job descriptions on the instagram and in a follow-up email so people can see how many hours they work, their salaries, and their job descriptions. Week 6 of Spring quarter would be good to do a presentation on the job description to the body like we did (in addition to Steering positions). The Bylaws say senate leadership election need to start the week after the announcement of who won the board elections so keep that in mind.

-Work to ensure the timing of elections allows newly elected people to help hire their Senate Clerk. This is VERY important! Coordinate with the Personnel Director next year about this.

-Ensure anyone whose legislation will not get passed will know to submit a “proposal” to Steering ensuring their legislation can be considered into the next session.

-End of the year ceremonies that are laid out in your job description, though the MC leads the charge on Senate Awards.

-Transition docs and training your successor: Make a plan with them once announced. I suggest creating a note section on the work laptop and jot down everything that you wish you knew.

-What is below is last years advice. This year, I didn’t really use that because admin positions/emails change so frequently. I started a small thing on the notes app on this computer that you could use or add to. Normally for sending legislation, I just searched for their emails online. The faculty senate will have a roster with all the new emails next year posted on their website.

-There’s a google sheet on the drive that has a list of some important campus administrator emails so you don’t have to look them up every time you forward them legislation (if you have, or find, their name, you can use the UW directory to find this contact info as well – students, faculty, or administrators). For senators, make sure the MC uploads new Senators’ contact info to the Mailchimp server every week so that they’ll receive your emails.

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-Take breaks if things are tense or long winded. It is never a bad move to take a break. Just suggest a recess and someone will motion or direct a member of Senate leadership to do so. I know the agendas are tight but if anyone is getting emotional or it seems like a breather would be good, ask the body if anyone has an objection for a 3 minute recess.

-Ensure all sensitive material contains a content warning. The website now has a section for it but the go to rule is after leadership reads the content warning give 30-45 seconds before beginning. It should be enough time so no one feels uncomfortable stepping out if they need to.

-If there is an important forum, ensure there is a timestamp when they said they would come. Simply save time and doesn’t waste theirs. President Cauce is a good example of someone to make sure there is a time stamp.

-Contextualize the agenda for people so they know what’s coming. Ex: Debate is likely to go long in committee meetings so we may not get to old business. This is something I could of improved on.

-If you follow the agenda you should be more or less okay. Just practice how agendas go and common motions;look to your Vice Speaker if you need any help (they should be your dictionary on parliamentary procedure), and make sure to call on as many people as possible fairly (Roberts Rules says everyone must have the ability to speak once before you loop back around to someone who has already spoken). I sometimes ignored this one so that way there could be more relevant conversations if we were debating a topic. Don’t forget, you have the authority to cut people off if they’re speaking opinions during first readings, getting out of line, etc. I never really did this unless absolutely necessary because it rarely ever seems intentional and I didn’t want to create a space of hesitation due to fear of stepping out of line because you don’t know the rules. Remember that although you may disagree heavily with what is being said, it is a requirement to be impartial and give them the same treatment as everyone else. Guarded, if they are being really offensive and creating an unsafe environment you need to step in. This is one of those tricky things that you have to balance that people may come at you for. Just stay true to yourself. 

The time limit for each senator to speak is 10 minutes at a time, so keep in mind they’re allowed to ramble. This gets awkward sometimes. 

This is something I don’t doubt that you will do, but I call on folks that usually don’t talk often first. But you’ll get the gist of when to call on who in. For forums it’s good to try and lift up underrepresented voices during these times. 

– Try to not get behind in emails. You lead the senate so you will get emails outside of your job description. If it’s an easy answer go for it. If it is someone else’s job description, forward it to them to respond. Usually when a student not in ASUW emailed me about something that was totally outside of my job, I would forward it to correct person and then email the student saying “thank you for reaching out, I forwarded your email to “x” because they have more information to answer your question. Let me know if you need anything else! ”

Reminders/agenda to Steering each week (with the proposed Senate agenda hyperlinked by email). I usually also reminded steering on slack about anything important.

 emails about what resolutions have passed to various administrators on campus, and muchhh more. There is a google doc in the drive with a nice very professional template. I recommend using it and plugging in the correct updated information each time. I usually cc’d the president on every legislation forwarding clause so the admin knows the President is aware about this too and it’s ok to talk to them about it. The rest of the people in the forwarding clause I put on the BCC spot. 

– Five years ago, OComm implemented the use of Slack for all employees for ASUW, so you’ll be using that to communicate with anyone in the office. Do this rather than using Faceboook messenger for group chats because all work-related communications are subject to OPMA (public records office) and you don’t want them to request access to your Facebook chats or text messages. All committee chairs should have access to slack and should primarily communicate on there. They will also need to get added to the #allstaff slack channel and all staff email list by OCOMM so reach out to them before school year about that. 

-Be vigilant about how you use social media during Board elections. If you use social media for any senate business like senate bonding planning or anything else and then endorse a candidate on your social media it could cause a lot of problems. 

-More of the MC’s job, but make sure to reach out to all the communities that have protected seats and any other ones you can think of. I don’t mean the residence halls so much, though you can always reach out to the new RCSA Director of Government Affairs regarding that– I mean the JCC seats etc. If you can, it’s a good idea to present to JCC in the fall (just make sure they’ve invited you into the space – they meet Monday evenings) so they are all aware they have protected seats to be filled. Sarah mostly did direct outreach as the parliamentarian to help give trainings on roberts rules and how senate works. Make sure you tell them they can use interns (or go themselves), explain briefly how Senate works, and let them know you’re there as a resource if they have questions. This will go towards bridging the divide between the 121 and 131 suites. RSO’s also have designated seats! Go to RSO fairs and events to let them know what senate is, that you are a resource for them, and that they have a designated seat in senate. They need like 15 members to count so have membership coordinator verify.

It is important to reach out to the community as speaker but don’t overstep. Ultimately, it is the MC decision how to do outreach. With that being said, you should still definitely offer suggestions and assign goals and assist as much as you can. 

-One final note, make sure you know which entity has a protected seat and which doesn’t. We got a lot of weird emails about this.

These are all the committee chairs, plus the members of leadership, your SAO advisor, and two members of board (Director of University Affairs and Director of Internal Policy). Total of 13 people including the AA, but only 9 members can vote (committee chairs and leadership). As speaker I tried to steer away from any voting or big opinions and let Sarah/Vanessa do it so that I could remain impartial. The past few years we have just been using the votes of chairs because it follows the practice of leadership abstaining. 

-Meet once a week before Senate to set the agenda. These meetings are open to the public and change every quarter according to the schedules of the people in it. These meetings felt procedural when I was a chair so this year I really focused on encouraging input/conversations during the discussion period about issues going on in senate, ideas to make senate better, or how leadership could improve. If you hear someone say something during steering, offer to circle back to it when you get to the discussion section on the agenda. Utilize steering is my big advice. 

-Keep in mind how important the agenda is for determining how a meeting will go. Things like time stamps, where old business is, etc. will make a big difference. If old business hasn’t been gotten to in awhile, bring it up as a reminder when you introduce the senate agenda to steering! Additionally, it’s my recommendation that steering tries to keep Special Orders & Tabling Indefinitely to a minimum, as they’re both a titch unfair. For the most part, it’s a good idea to let senators decide this on the floor (it’s generally much better to let a vote be taken to the floor than decide something potentially contentious by yourself, although if there’s a general consensus, a simple “any objections? seeing none…” works)

-There is a section in the steering agenda called General updates. Every week we included glows and grows on it. This is when I would use popcorn style and have each committee chair say something good about how committee meeting went and something they want to improve. If there was no committee meetings I would ask them to say something about the last meeting for senate overall. We usually have the two board members do this as well but in a general sense for their job.

-We have tons of these across campus. Work with the chair of the Oversight committee to check in with them once a quarter to make sure they’re attending meetings, representing senate, and reporting any information senate may want or need for resolution writing, etc. You could try doing a bi-weekly update from liaisons to make sure Senate is up-to-date with the happenings of the ASUW-delineated committees. Mario can also help with this process of making sure that happens since vice speaker sits on oversight, but you’ll want to check in with Oversight Chair about coordinating regularly with liaisons. You will want to check in with the STF, SAF, F&B, Leg Steering, Judicial, and U-PASS Liaisons before the year starts to make sure they have registered as Senators (we had an issue with this at the beginning of the year). And honestly, send them a reminder email about Senate in the summer, so they remember! We had a few quit at the beginning of last year.

-There will be folks emailing you requesting Senate liaisons throughout the year for different task forces and ASUW entities. Some of them will include ASUW Personnel Committee, HUB Board of Representatives, and some folks from Health and Wellness. Senate can elect a liaison to whatever we want, basically, if someone asks for one. 

-One issue I had this year was board trying to get senate to fill committees they are required to fill or sit on. If it is in their job description, they gotta figure it out. You can suggest some senators they can reach out to but senate can’t oversee a liaison that a board member is supposed to oversee.

-Communication is everything. Make sure people know it’s okay to make a mistake as long as they communicate it and can take feedback.

-Be sure to share the load. Job descriptions are one thing, but some weeks have little work for one member and lots for another. So check in to ensure no one is burning out. Usually as speaker, you fill in if MC or VS is absent on the big main responsibilities like attending board or hosting bonding events.

-Build connection beyond just work. Try hanging outside of work if that feels right.

-Decorate your space! Write funny quotes on the board. Do whatever to make it your own.

-Reminder: although you are the entity director, leadership has defined roles. You are meant to combine your goals, compromise, and work together to make senate great. No one person leads or is senate. 

-Fun fact: Speaker used to attend board for senate. They changed it to the VS because they felt the speaker was becoming too close to board. So remind yourself that 1. Your whole job is senate. Get to know the people, be the first to reach out, spend time with leadership, etc. With that being said, the VS is an interesting position because they are a full board member. They attend every board meeting, go to leadership summits with them, and know what is happening in both senate and board. Remind yourself that this is a resource and work with your VS to find out how you can help senate and board work together. 

-You’ll be electing lots of Senate liaisons in the fall. You’ll just prepare one question for these elections, and give each candidate 30 seconds to answer. The Vice Speaker is the one in charge of running the voting system. Remember, it is supposed to be a two week process.

-ASUW Board elections: you host a forum for this. Questions from years past can be found on the drive, though you should be personalizing at least one question based on published platforms. Each candidate will get some time to open, close, and answer their questions. Each candidate will get two or three questions depending on how many tickets are running. 1 minute is actually plenty of time, so a 30 second open and close for all candidates other than the President should be plenty. Make sure you give them a 10 second warning before their time is up and you gavel. 45 seconds per question should be fine, 1 minute for the Presidential candidates. Go ahead and look at the previous documents for timing. The EAC Chair and The Daily may also get in touch with you ahead of the forum.

-Senate leadership elections happen a week after the Board election results are announced, so folks can run in both if desired. Again, questions can be found on the drive. Ask ahead of time if a member of leadership is running in any board or senate elections and then exclude them out of any planning. I had Sarah, Vanessa, and Isabella plan the whole board forum since I was running. Senate elections are entirely up to your discretion per what to ask. Remember that there is meant to be a week between initial nominations and second round nominations+ elections.

I’ll say that the role the Speaker plays in resolution follow-up can be overstated sometimes. I believe that the role of the position is a supporting one to the groups advocating on their own behalf through a resolution in our body. After a resolution passes Senate, there is almost nothing the Speaker can do realistically to push 30 pieces of legislation into the ears and minds of administrators and legislators. Most of what I was able to do in the role was help these students write their legislation well, give them advice on how to proceed, and support their organizing efforts afterwards. But CRFU has done a terrific job in creating a system to facilitate this process, and I would work closely with the chair to ensure the process continues.

Hybrid meetings are sooooooo easy, jk. They are really difficult in terms of leading meetings but such a great accessibility feature. 

Based off new OPMA regulations by our Governor, no meeting can be conducted 100% virtual. This means senate and steering. I would check in with board next year if this is what you are thinking is needed.

Challenges: Students have tons of reasons for joining virtually but it is difficult to lead meetings with 50% of the body on zoom. People often zone out and miss votes and it hurts quorum. My suggestion is to emphasize each quarter that senators should attend in person if they can and feel safe but we have a hybrid option in case you can’t. The other challenge is committee meetings. Committee chairs couldn’t find a comfortable way to do it and we were stumped for ideas as well. What they normally did was join from their laptop and hold it nearby so people on zoom could hear. The last big challenge was just balancing between both. I tried multiple times to dedicate time for people on zoom to ask questions and would be met with silence. That’s fine but hard to figure out if there is a single reason why people aren’t participating as much on there. Something to keep in mind that people in person don’t have a zoom chat and have to say everything out loud so think about fairness. Also, zoom chat is public record and must be recorded somewhere in case someone asks for it, have the Senate Clerk handle that.

Step by step guide

1. Create a weekly senate meeting on zoom and make vice speaker, MC, and Clerk co hosts. Usually have to do this when you start the meeting each week.
2. Have the vice speaker start the zoom meeting and hook up their laptop to the system. Try to rent a facing camera to also connect to a laptop so people can see both sides of the room. You can rent one at the tech place under Kane I believe.
3. Assign cart-captioning privileges to the cart-captioner
4. Create 6 breakout rooms for the committee meetings that you will open during committee meetings.
5. Make sure mic has full battery level and have everyone speak in the mic or repeat it if it’s quick.
6. Have the Clerk record the meeting to help them take minutes. This is not to be given to anyone as evidence someone did this or that. It is simply to help to senate clerk type minutes. Anything they want to see will be in the minutes and approved by steering.
7. Have the MC monitor the zoom chat and zoom. They usually have time since they aren’t required to do too much during the senate meeting besides handle attendance or any questions people dm them. 
8. Have the VS use another laptop to do votes so that way the admin links are not shown to everyone
9. If a committee chair has legislation in their committee, enable screen share for everyone before committee meetings to allow them to share their screen. Also give them suggestion access to the google doc so they can have the amendments proposed and ready to go.

-Cart Captioner: the Services and activities fee committee thought it would be cool to make senate inaccessible and not fund our cart-captioning. Not a good look. I would push to include it in the budget next year again. Regardless, there are still ways to get it but it will be slower since you will need money for it. You should reach out to OID ASAP to have them submit to board funding for cart-captioning. They might need time to set up everything so what you can do is use all of senate’s budget money for programming/printing/whatever you have in the budget to pay for it and then when OID is ready they will ask board to use their budget to reimburse senate and fund the rest. You can also try STF committee if OID isn’t working for some reason. The VS will reach out to DRS to get a cart-captioner scheduled and you will need to send the budget code to someone from DRS (DRS will say who). 

-Try to organize with MC about going to hall caucus once a quarter!

-I personally hate power structures when not needed. I’ve seen some people in leadership positions be extremely official and find ways to have control. That is not this position. You are a reflection of senate so keep that in mind. For example, in the recent past the speaker used to dress up in a suite, but do you want senators to do that? You are a student above all else. Work to create a welcoming environment where students aren’t stressed/scared to meet with you and come to you with concerns. 

-Zoom webinar vs. large meetings. This past year we had zoom large meetings which is half the price of zoom webinar. It is like a normal zoom call but allows a lot of people. Zoom webinar is what you have allocated in the budget. This one distinguishes between panhellists and attendees. This can be an advantage because that way you can promote senators to the status of panhellists when they join and that gives them all the privileges as being in a normal zoom meeting. The attendees just can see the video which fulfills OPMA guidelines and allows more protection in the case of zoom bombing and knowing if someone is a senator or not on zoom. Surprisingly, ASUW has had a couple of problems with zoom bombing. Think over which one you want and then speak with Rene over the summer to purchase it. It will go under your personal UW email per UW requirements. 

Committee chair pay. Originally, they were meant to get stipends at the end of each quarter. I changed it to hourly pay for a couple reasons. 1. It is more accessible for students to get some money biweekly in case they need it instead of one large amount at the end of each quarter. 2. If a committee chair quits (which seems to happen every year at some point) then they can get the money for when they did work and the new chair can jump and get paid as well. 

-People will want you to ignore the bylaws and rules all the time. As a reminder, they are there for a reason and if you want to know why Rene always has so many stories. It is your job as speaker to know them, along with leadership, and follow them. 

-There are a lot of sneaky bylaw/rule stuff so take note of the weird ones. For example, CRFU is supposed to be limited to like 15 senators. You also sit on CRFU as speaker but I didn’t really have much to share each week since board wasn’t very good at communicating updates to me. Might be worth looking into so that you can find an accessible way for board members to do that without constant meetings.

-Personnel: FUCK ASUW PERSONNEL POLICY. It doesn’t exist even though it does. It is a piece of paper with no teeth. Next year’s board and personnel director will most likely be rewriting the whole thing because having one student as the whole HR department is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard. This is coming from a psych major -_-.  I would always recommend still using it if needed because it can still resolve conflicts and you need a paper trail to do anything meaningful. Also, if it’s severe enough the president can freeze pay so remember that we are here to help find a solution.

-Drama: people will talk mad shit about people because they don’t assume good intentions. People wanted me to have meetings with people and tell them off when it was very clear that they honestly did not know and wanted to learn more. I upset some people about this but at the end of the day, senate is a place for people to learn as well! We can’t expect everyone to know how to word everything correctly because we all come from very different backgrounds. Ask yourself, “Is this person saying this because they are intentionally trying to be harmful?” Depending how you answer is how you will move forward. 

-Drama 2.0: Pls don’t talk shit about people during office hours. If you have frustrations, bring it up to the personnel director. If you don’t want to, say it outside of work. People say ASUW is toxic and we all have a role to play. This isn’t to say I’m perfect, but the culture you set at the beginning of the year carries through. Also, senators will be less likely to come to you as a resource if they feel that conversations you have are not genuine and between you.