It’s that time of the week again. Everyone’s favorite student government, the University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA), held their weekly assembly meeting last night, and boy was it a barnburner, folks.

As always, the meeting began with open student forum, a chance for Penn State students to voice their opinions to the UPUA assembly. Donning a vibrant “Corbett=Hypocrite” t-shirt, university-renowned conspiracy theorist Aaron Dillon was the only person to take the microphone.

Dillon asked UPUA if they had heard about an article by fellow conspiracy theorist Victor Thorn regarding the Greg Bucceroni claims that Sandusky was pimping out Second Mile children to “rich donors.” Armed with hundreds of articles that he printed out himself, Dillon attempted to get his message across, but only three UPUA members actually took his paperwork.

Dillon has previously spoken at the Board of Trustees public forum, and at the student town hall forum. Vice President Katelyn Mullen said that “they would ask the Board of Trustees about it,” but if UPUA can’t even run a budget commission, how can Dillon expect them to deal with something like this?

In President Lennartz’s report, she discussed a HUB remodeling project that is up for approval in March. She mentioned that she will be meeting with VP of Student Affairs Damon Sims tomorrow to discuss joint initiatives with the administration, along with CCSG and GSA.

And on to the confirmations:

Rachel Miller, a senior with extensive experience in student activities, was confirmed 29-1-1 to the Board of Arbitrations. Who voted no? Why did they vote no? Why didn’t they object to her appointment to during the debate period? What is the meaning of life?

Anthony Panichelli, an international politics major and member of mock trial, said he wanted to give back to the school through the Board of Arbitrations. He was confirmed 28-1-0. Why are there two less votes than in Rachel Miller’s confirmation? Who voted no? More questions, but no answers. UPUA meetings are more suspenseful than an episode of Lost.

And next up, the only piece of legislation of the night:

Policy 04-07: Constitutional Amendment – Line of Succession

This is probably the most important piece of legislation to ever pass through the UPUA assembly. Apparently, the assembly decided that they need a policy in place in case there is a vacancy in the top executive position.

Now, I’m not too sure about this, but something tells me that there isn’t exactly a big risk involved with being UPUA’s president. Better safe than sorry, I suppose.

Just to give you a brief rundown of the line of succession, the order of succession for the president is now as follows: Vice President, Chairman of the Board, and then Chief of Staff (who would be the President pro tempore). A two-thirds vote from the assembly would be needed to confirm that pro tempore as the new President.

Regardless, as is expected with every piece of legislation, it passed unanimously with a vote of 30-0-0. Just to recap, there were three votes last night with three different vote counts. How can we trust these people to be our student government representatives if they can’t even count?

One more motion was brought to the floor by Internal Development Chair Dray Krishnan, which reallocated $23,000 from the white loop extension into other areas of the budget. Evidently, the 6th assembly already paid for the white loop project last year, leaving UPUA with an accounting nightmare and another $23,000 to blow.

Representative Anthony Christina objected to the part of the motion earmarked $5,000 for “Book Exchange Infrastructure.” Anyone who has followed the UPUA book exchange saga knows that the well-intended initiative has been a colossal failure, and Christina objected to “throwing more money into it.”

Instead, Christina made a motion to move the $5,000 to a discretionary account. Of course, the Assembly struck down Christina’s amendment 17-12, and instead voted to restrict themselves by potentially wasting more money on the book exchange.

But who is surprised?

Elias Warren Quote of the Week: While trying to convince UPUA members to go to some event at the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center that I can’t recall and that they probably won’t go to anyway, Warren said: “Please, I hope to see at least one of you there.” A roar of laughter erupted from the easy crowd.

John Zang Tie of the Week (4/5): Chief of Staff and overall good guy John Zang wore a white button-down shirt, a black vest, and a light blue tie. Finally straying from the usual skinny tie, Zang gets a 4 out of 5 for his tie choice this week. He may have been wearing a class ring though, which clashed with the tie (class rings clash with pretty much everything), so we have still yet to see a perfect rating this semester.

Tune in next week for more UPUA coverage.