Student Association Vice President Tanya Smith’s position as NIU representative for the Illinois Student Association will be taken over by SA President Robert McCormack.

The representative position is one which is usually held by the Student Association president. The president may appoint someone to this position. Since Smith was the representative last year, McCormack allowed her to stay on this year.

However, several senators have complained, because Smith is not handing out ISA information and is only attending part of the ISA meetings.

“(Smith) represents this entire school to the Illinois Student Association and she is cutting off channels of communication that are a must for running the SA effectively,” said Sen. Paul Fabrizius.

“I don’t think we have used ISA to its potential,” said ISA field representative Tom Ellett. “As far as I know, no ISA information has gone past our office,” he said.

Sen. Mike Ruderman said the only thing he has received is a packet about the ISA in his mailbox. Ellett said he put the packets in their mailboxes.

Smith said she receives a lot of information from ISA and she has all of the information at the SA office if anyone wants to see it, but said she can’t copy 500 to 600 pages every time she gets information.

Ellett, who said he thinks the ISA is beneficial to NIU, said if the senate were to see this information they would gain more confidence in what they can do.

Smith also said she told senators about the ISA, but none of the senators expressed an interest to her about it.

Smith is the NIU representative for the ISA and is expected to attend all of the ISA meetings, which generally are on Fridays and continue until Saturdays. “I have attended all of the meetings,” Smith said.

However, according to the ISA minutes, Smith has missed eleven meetings since she began representing NIU.

She also said she was not at the first part of last week’s meeting, which was Friday, but made it to part of the meeting which continued on Saturday. This totals twelve absences. But “a representative from Northern was there at all times,” Smith explained.

Also, Ellett said there was a lot of controversy this summer about whether ISA had notified NIU about a pending appointment to the Joint Committee on College Tuition. Smith insisted that NIU wasn’t, Ellett said.

However, ISA meeting minutes show Smith present when board representation was discussed.