By Lauren Beeman

After a vote to give a school organization $500, SGA President Gino Grivetti asked anyone not elected to the student government to leave the regularly scheduled Tuesday night Student Government Association meeting.

Vice-President Mary Argana told QU Media after the closed session that the senators ratified a new constitution and said discussion centered around SGA’s plans moving forward for the year.

“We just discussed our new constitution and updated it from what it previously was and made it better. We also discussed our upcoming elections and planned how they were going to go. We talked about revamping SGA and making it the way it’s supposed to be so it can serve our community better,” Argana said.

It has not yet been disclosed when the new constitution will be available for students to read, and it remains unknown whether or not the senate changed the dates of the upcoming election scheduled to take place in November. However, in an email sent to senators Tuesday morning, Grivetti said there would be discussion about a new constitution, the addition or removal of senate members, and upcoming elections during a closed session at the regularly scheduled SGA meeting.

“I want the students to know that we are wanting to change for the better, and we want to hear from our students to know what they want and what they want us to improve,” Senator Fallon Myers said.

Senator attendance increased noticeably since last week’s meeting, and only two current senators were absent. Neither SGA advisor was present for the meeting.

President Gino Grivetti passed around a new constitution to senate members before the start of the meeting. It has not been released to students.

QU Media has learned the new constitution aligns with Grivetti’s original intentions for the document and is two pages in length.

SGA did not publish it’s meeting agenda, but the former constitution has a meeting procedure template that the senators follow. The first agenda item Tuesday night was a funding request from the Skyhawks Flight Team.

The team asked SGA for $500 toward it’s upcoming competition being hosted by Quincy University. After hearing the team’s presentation and learning about failed fundraising attempts, the governing body elected to award the Skyhawks the full amount.

“They are doing their due diligence, but they aren’t raising enough…they need it,” Senator Ernest Baker said.

By granting the funding request, the SGA budget now totals $3,500 for the remainder of the year. Last month, the student executive team voted to spend $1,000 on tailgating items for homecoming.

Grivetti mentioned during his campaign for the presidency that a limited budget did not seem to be an area of concern.

“A couple thousand dollars is more than enough to get everything done that I want to get done,” Grivetti said.

After the request was approved, Grivetti announced that the new business agenda items were going to be discussed behind closed doors, and asked a student media representative and one other non-elected student to leave the meeting. The rest of the SGA meeting was closed to the public.

“At this point in time I am going to ask all those who are not elected senators to step outside. This is to maintain confidentiality of our discussion,” Grivetti said.

The meeting remained closed to the public as well as the press for the remainder of the session. Grivetti was not available for comment after the meeting.

During his campaign, Grivetti stated his vision for SGA included all students, not just elected members.