The first Associated Students of Cerritos College Senate meeting of the 2016 Spring semester brought concerns and dysfunction to the gathering.

On Wednesday, Jan. 13 the student senate expected to have the inaugural meeting of the year, before it was revealed they were not allowed to.

Vice President Ivan Oyarzabal started the unofficial meeting by stating they weren’t permitted to move forward due to not meeting quorum.

In order to have a meeting, senate must meet quorum by having a minimum of 30 people in attendance and at least 20 senators present in the meeting.

Not only were there only 29 in attendance, but there wasn’t even 20 senators present.

There have been resignations over the break and there was even two resignations the day of the scheduled meeting.

ASCC President Eduardo De La Rosa said,”We’ve had at least six resignations so far, one of them ten minutes before today’s meeting.

Students are resigning for different reasons, like not having grade checks and issues with work and class scheduling.”

He felt timing was not on their side and it was indeed an issue.

Many senators weren’t too pleased with the situation and many concerns arose.

There was disdain by that fact that the senators did not know that there would be a meeting because there was no email sent out to them, and not everyone had a grade check or was prepared to meet.

Some felt frustrated that the people in charge did not do enough to get replacements in time.

The senators wanted to make sure the situation was being handled and that they would be able to meet for the next scheduled time.

De La Rosa was confident that the situation was being handled.

“We have applications coming in and we do expect to have a meeting,” said De La Rosa.

He revealed that there are four possible candidates in line for senator positions.

The semester started off with 35 members on senate and by the time of the meeting, there were only 29 senators.

It was also revealed that court did not meet quorum leaving more concerns.

In addition, cabinet did not meet.

With all student governments not meeting, many decisions aren’t being made, such as discussing budgets and other school related issues.

Without student government, the students would not get a say on what happens to Cerritos.

Chief Justice Trent Coates was also not happy with the situation, but was hopeful that senate would be meeting next week.

“Each member of senate represents 500 students, we are leaving student’s voices out, that is over 3,000 plus students not being heard,” he said.

Coates also felt there are ways to keep this from happening again.

“We need to recruit more students, like, tell them what we do, and how we change the community,” he said.

Senate is expected to meet again this Wednesday.