After spotty attendance at this year’s Georgetown University Student Association Senate meetings, Senate Speaker Reggie Greer (COL ’09) announced Wednesday that eight senators have resigned from their posts, leaving several student districts unrepresented in the elected body.

Senator Tim Swenson (COL ’10) sent out an e-mail on Feb. 17 asking that those senators who had not been attending GUSA meetings regularly resign from their positions.

“Last week we had an issue with attendance and it appears it’s because there are some people that never come to meetings anymore but are still on the roster. . If you were elected to be a senator but have since stopped coming to meetings, send a message of resignation to Reggie before tomorrow,” Swenson said.

Ian Hampton (COL ’10), representative of Village A AB; Emmanuel Hampton (COL ’11), representative of Henle 22-30; Joe Curran (SFS ’09), off-campus representative; Pat Salvo (SFS ’09), off-campus representative; Alex Meyer (COL ’10), off-campus representative; and Matt Breen (MSB ’10), representative of the 36th and 37th Street townhouses, all announced that they would resign from their posts as senators. Former Vice-Speaker Brian Wood (COL ’09) and Joe Hill (COL ’10), representative of Village A CDE, also resigned from the senate, though not due to attendance issues.

Ian Hampton said that he is not surprised over the e-mail and knew that his lack of attendance was beginning to be a problem.

“Due to scheduling conflicts, I was unable to attend senate meetings. . Theoretically I should have been expelled after missing three meetings, but I was not,” he said. “I think it was a long time coming and I don’t really hold it against them.”

Curran, on the other hand, felt that the situation was not handled as well as it could have been.

“I am displeased at the way this situation has unfolded. As soon as I was notified that my irregular attendance at meetings was causing problems for the senate, I resigned my position,” Curran said.

Emmanuel Hampton, Salvo, Meyer, Breen and Wood could not be reached for comment.

With these resignations, the off-campus student body, which usually has four elected representatives, is now not represented at all.

“What makes us think that some of these districts even want to be represented anymore?” Swenson said.

While the senate debated possible courses of action to replace these senators, they came to no conclusion. According to Greer, if the president of GUSA, Pat Dowd (COL ’09), does not set up an election within a month, then the election commission for GUSA takes over.

Senator Nick Troiano (COL ’11) said that he doubts that all vacancies will be filled.

“At this point it’s so late in the game that I don’t think we’re going to have a lot of candidates anyway.”

Senator Sam Hyman (COL ’12) stressed that the seats need to be filled and suggested that GUSA coordinate the senate elections with the upcoming presidential elections so that students would only need to vote once.

“It’s a short time, but we need to fill these vacancies,” he said.

Some senators advocated having district RAs administer the elections, and others felt that the GUSA Senate should appoint candidates to fill the vacancies. March 3 was discussed as a date for the upcoming election.

Senator Matt Wagner (COL ’11) expressed concern with changing the by-laws to allow the senate to appoint the new senators.

“For now, I just don’t think we should change the rules and then play by the new rules to fill these vacancies,” he said. “But making new ones going forward is a good idea.”

Greer said that he wants to get all of this settled fairly quickly.

“I just want to get some ideas out so we can move forward,” he said.

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