Instead of carrying out a formal trial, the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) Supreme Court decided it would issue a summary judgment on a case in which Senate President Erin Ferris was accused of violating USG Senate bylaws.

However, Supreme Court Chief Justice Taylor Rhodes said the decision will not be officially released until early next week.

South Halls Sen. Andy Banducci and East Halls Sen. Matt Ritsko filed a complaint with the court after Ferris allegedly called an "illegal" Senate meeting to vote on referendum questions that appeared on the 2004 USG elections ballot last Wednesday. The questions are intended to gauge student opinion about current Penn State issues.

Senate bylaws state that the Senate president may call a special meeting during a regularly scheduled meeting, but must give all senators at least 24 hours notice. Also, all rules governing regularly scheduled meetings apply to special meetings, according to the bylaws.

Ferris said she did not call a special session, but telephoned all senators to conduct "a poll of support" for the current referendum questions, which were written by the Senate's Student Services Committee.

"It was to see if these were questions that were actually going to come up and pass," Ferris said referring to the "poll of support."

USG President Ian Rosenberger said Head Elections Commissioner Tim Dorman had to upload the questions online two days before USG elections in order for them to appear on the ballot, meaning Ferris had no choice but to make the last-minute telephone calls.

Ferris said it was not necessary for her to call a special session to approve referendum questions because Senate is not required to approve the questions.

However, the USG Constitution mandates that a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate or Academic Assembly approves referendum questions. Otherwise, students who have acquired 1,000 supporting signatures can submit the questions to the elections commission.

Ritsko said he feels that following the rules is more important than having referendum questions on the ballot.

"I think you need to make sure the rules are being preserved. That's my job as IA (internal affairs) chair," Ritsko said.

Ritsko said if a majority of student voters answer a question a certain way, USG adopts the result as its official stance as long as more than 25 percent of the student body votes in the elections.

For example, in a past referendum, a large number of student voters said they did not want the administration to increase their student activity fee, so USG could not pursue any policies that would increase the fee, he said.

Banducci and Ritsko said they would like to see the court void the results of this year's referenda to ensure they would not bind USG to any official policies.

"Because the referendum questions were illegally placed on the ballot, you can't having law deriving from that," Banducci said.

Banducci added that the referendum questions could not be considered during a legislative session because the Senate lost quorum at its March 23 meeting.

Rosenberger said he thought it was more important for USG to have referendum questions on the ballot, even though it might have been a Senate bylaw violation.