The recent struggle for the ASCC-appointed student member to be part of the full-time faculty employment selection committee has ended Tuesday after the faculty senate voted that the student member would be optional.

The vote arrives after several weeks of students, ASCC members and faculty voicing their opinions and debating on whether or not to include a non-voting student member on the hiring committee; many of the students and faculty were present during the final vote. Most of which arrived early holding signs in hopes of encouraging the faculty senate to vote in favor of the students.

 The results were announced as follows, eight votes mandatory involvement, 12 votes for optional student involvement and five votes for no student participation.

“It was the least we could have expected, that is how it decided to vote, we just have to work with it,” said ASCC Vice President, Rosa Casteneda.

The vote did not come with any ease and it was under constant debate up until the very end.  With several faculty senate members lashing out onto how exactly the votes were to be counted, were the votes to be disseminated to the individual representatives in each department, or was there suppose to be one overall vote that was supposed to speak for its respective department? 

Debra Moore, President of the faculty senate, said she could not give a straight answer onto how they were to vote. So while there was no consensus on how exactly to vote, it led many departments to vote in an unorthodox fashion. 

Debbie Johnson the physical education major advisor said she voted three different times, voting mandatory, optional and no to fully represent the feelings of the physical education department. ” Voting no, had nothing with us as a department not wishing for the student’s success. We just didn’t feel that the vote would impede with student success,” she added.

Though there was uncertainty throughout the process. The ASCC and students still look at this as a partial win. ” It’s a compromise, it’s a win, win,” said senate member Terrell Berry.

“I think it was a personal thing, if they felt that strong about it they would have voted differently, I am just very proud of the students, and I encourage students to be there during the hiring committees when called upon,” added Castaneda.