Spring Break
Senate eliminates COO
Chris Curtis
Issue date: 10/23/08 Section: News
10/23/08 - In a surprisingly swift, vote the University of Rhode Island Student Senate eliminated the chief operations officer post last night, calling it an unnecessary position.
While current COO Josh Feinberg will keep his $2,000-a-year job, the post will disappear when his term ends.
The amendment to the Senate Bylaws dissolving the position and reassigning most of the associated duties to the vice president passed with one "nay" vote and one abstention.
The overwhelming vote came after the senate spent hours last spring debating the merits of keeping the position.
Senator Shane Lee attributed the lack of controversy to weariness with the topic.
"Last year it was kind of fought out, all the battle and the tension of the ideas as far as whether the COO position was useful … and I think we had a lot of people on the sidelines who were sick of it," Lee said.
Lee was a vocal critic of the position last semester and attributed the amendment's easy passage to the high percentage of new senators.
Allen Petit, chairman of the Bylaws Committee that drafted the bill, expressed a similar opinion.
"I feel it's because a lot of the people who really knew more of the root of the issue graduated," Petit said. "As you can see, almost half of the people seated around the table are new senators … and they're not as knowledgeable about past events of senate I guess."
After the meeting Feinberg said, "As the current COO I neither support the bill nor am against the bill. There's a lot of history behind this bill going back to last semester when the bill was voted to the Bylaws committee, that being said I trust their judgment."
"I still think that the COO has great potential, but at this time there's no need for it," he said.
According to the text of the bill passed last night, "The office of the chief operations officer has not been utilized to any degree of effectiveness for its entire period of existence," and "duplicates either on paper or in practice the duties of many other offices."
While current COO Josh Feinberg will keep his $2,000-a-year job, the post will disappear when his term ends.
The amendment to the Senate Bylaws dissolving the position and reassigning most of the associated duties to the vice president passed with one "nay" vote and one abstention.
The overwhelming vote came after the senate spent hours last spring debating the merits of keeping the position.
Senator Shane Lee attributed the lack of controversy to weariness with the topic.
"Last year it was kind of fought out, all the battle and the tension of the ideas as far as whether the COO position was useful … and I think we had a lot of people on the sidelines who were sick of it," Lee said.
Lee was a vocal critic of the position last semester and attributed the amendment's easy passage to the high percentage of new senators.
Allen Petit, chairman of the Bylaws Committee that drafted the bill, expressed a similar opinion.
"I feel it's because a lot of the people who really knew more of the root of the issue graduated," Petit said. "As you can see, almost half of the people seated around the table are new senators … and they're not as knowledgeable about past events of senate I guess."
After the meeting Feinberg said, "As the current COO I neither support the bill nor am against the bill. There's a lot of history behind this bill going back to last semester when the bill was voted to the Bylaws committee, that being said I trust their judgment."
"I still think that the COO has great potential, but at this time there's no need for it," he said.
According to the text of the bill passed last night, "The office of the chief operations officer has not been utilized to any degree of effectiveness for its entire period of existence," and "duplicates either on paper or in practice the duties of many other offices."
