PSSS Heeds the Call, Demands Decision-Making Power

Kay Bailey

She/Her

Editor-in-Chief

11/10/24

The energy in the Student Senate room Monday night was anything but agreeable. A tense weight sat over the student representatives and their advisors throughout a three hour meeting, and for the first time in a while, Plymouth State Student Senate said no to the University Cabinet’s demands. At first faced with a request to cut student fee-funded services, PSSS emerged from their meeting with a forceful demand for greater student decision-making power.

Students were outspoken and the room was divided. USSB Trustee Ethan Dupuis and Provost Nate Bowditch confronted each other on PSSS’s refusal to cooperate with Cabinet. PSSS was not only refusing to rubber stamp what was functionally a pre-written resolution from Cabinet, but demanding a change: that there be proper student power within the University system. Last year, PSSS changed their name in an act of passivity, accepting their status as a purely advisory board. This year, they are striving to be something more.

Following a party Thursday night, Cabinet approached PSSS with a debt that needed to be paid. UPD could not handle the Halloween crowd in the Apartment Circle on their own, so they called in Plymouth PD, two emergency ambulance vehicles, and on-call staff from Student Life for reinforcement. Now, the town is invoicing PSU approximately $8,000 for the emergency response.

The funds for the bill needs to come from somewhere, and Cabinet has pushed that decision into PSSS’s hands. Cabinet has only asked PSSS to weigh in on this instance specifically; all other expenses and financial decisions of similar nature have never come to the Student Senate before this. There is also an approximately $15,000 bill for expenses acquired from Pirate Party. “This is my third year on Student Senate and we’re never had anything come through like this,” 2026 Class President Hannah Lowell noted. 

Regardless of PSSS’s final recommendation, Cabinet has made it clear they believe the $8,000 needs to come from some facet of student services. It would be students who are footing the bill.

Dupius objected to Cabinet asking PSSS to offer a recommendation. Halloween weekend is something the school could have better prepared for, he said. “I feel like that is more the fault of Cabinet, and now I think that they’re trying to get bailed out by student fees…by cutting student services,” Dupuis said, suggesting that Cabinet’s request for a recommendation was a warped way to shed responsibility. “They’re coming at us for a recommendation, asking ‘what do you want to cut of your own?’” he said. “I see it more like a robber who comes into your house and says ‘Guess what? You get to pick what I steal.’ I don’t think that makes any sense.”

Lowell was the first to propose not offering an official recommendation to Cabinet, leaving them to make the decision on their own. Lowell dislikes the image giving a recommendation would place onto the senate; the student body would think PSSS was responsible for pulling money away from student services, when in reality Cabinet has already laid out strict guidelines the recommendation needs to follow, she said.

Student Body President Liam Leavitt also spoke against giving a recommendation. Every year, Leavitt said, Cabinet acts like these things aren’t going to happen, and every year they scramble to find where they are going to draw the money from. Asking Student Senate to suddenly make the call on what sector of student services will inevitably lose funding is “inappropriate” behavior for the Cabinet to take up unwarranted.

There is no mechanism for PSSS to functionally have a vote in these decisions, and as Dupuis echoed Lowell and Leavitt’s inclination to withhold a recommendation, he took the conversation a step further, advocating for institutional change within the University. “We’re in the middle of drafting a resolution, and I think in that [there is] an opportunity to really have a say,” he said. “There should be a student position on cabinet that is an equal voting member.”

Adding a student vote to the University Cabinet would take PSSS from the purely advisory role they currently uphold, towards an organization closer to the kind of governing body they are striving to emulate.

“Student Senate doesn’t technically have the power to make this decision without a seat. We are only making a recommendation; it’s not binding,” Leavitt said. “Having a seat on Cabinet would be beneficial to make sure this situation doesn’t happen in the future.”

The proposed resolution, titled Resolution on Protecting Student Fees and Student Voices, decries the use of student activity fees to cover these expenses, expresses their desire for Cabinet to seek alternative funding for the costs acquired, suggests a contingency fund for these instances in the future, and recommends that a voting member from student senate be added to cabinet to advocate for future financial and policy decisions. This resolution makes a statement, a loud one, and not everyone in the room agreed with the message it would be sending.

Bowditch had serious objections he voiced to the room – loudly. The resolution, Bowditch said, did nothing to address the issue of unsanctioned illegal activity in the community; all he saw was PSSS refusing the responsibility Cabinet asked of them. All PSSS says with the resolution is, “we want the right to have a vote, to have a say, and we’re not going to offer anything in return,” he argued. Debate on Bowditch’s concerns escalated as Dupuis voiced his opposition, and Loughlin needed to call for order over the room in several instances.

Taylor Smith, newly elected Student Body Vice President, opposed the idea of refusing Cabinet’s requested resolution. Unlike Dupuis, Lowell, and Leavitt, Smith didn’t want PSSS to diminish the power of their recommendations. Though the students don’t have a voting member on Cabinet, that doesn’t stop PSSS from being able to “consider the voice they have.” Smith believes that by not giving a recommendation, PSSS would be resolving to say nothing at all.

Smith was also worried that the proposed resolution would “pose a problem with us being looked at favorably” from Cabinet. He felt that PSSS packed a lot into this one resolution, asking for too much too quickly.

Two amendments were offered to the resolution, proposed by 2025 Treasurer Olivia Griffin and PSSS Treasure Walter Tharar. Griffin objected to the recognition within the resolution of PSSS as a purely advisory body with no real decision making power, saying the phrasing was “dismissing the student senate before we even have a chance.” She also suggested offering concessions within the resolution, proposing to Cabinet “an immediate resolution, a potential long term solution so that we don’t have to cover our butts every year, and also proposing that we would like to have a voice.”

Tharar proposed three alternative routes for funding. He suggested billing the residents of the White Mountain Apartments, pulling money from the activities fund, or searching for an alternative funding route as outlined in the existing recommendation. Ultimately neither amendment was seconded, so both failed.

The resolution passed 7-2-1, with Smith and Griffin voting no and Tharar abstaining.

Passing this monolith of a resolution is a form of protest. PSSS is not only demanding there be a student held seat on Cabinet, but they are making a greater call for representation, actionable student power, and democracy. Regardless of how their recommendation is received, our student representatives showed they will no longer sit compliant to Cabinets every wish or demand. The Plymouth State Student Senate is ready for a change.