The Union Senate confirmed two students who will serve as representatives on the new Firearms Advisory Committee last Sunday.Student Union President Shreeya Sinha '09 chose Matt Rogers '08 and Fanny Familia '09 to join her. Professors Robert Moody (THA) and Paul Jankowski (HIST), Chief Operating Officer Peter French and Director of Public Safety Ed Callahan will also serve on the committee. French will chair the committee.

University President Jehuda Reinharz formed the committee at the end of last month to advise the University as it implements its policy of arming officers, a decision he reached in September after the recommendations of a committee of students, faculty and staff that convened over the summer. Reinharz originally ordered that the new committee be comprised of two faculty members, two graduate students, two undergraduate students and two staff members.

Sinha e-mailed an application for the committee to the entire student body Nov. 5. The committee will convene after Thanksgiving, she said, adding that the student representatives' goal will be to gather student opinions on the issue through forums and visits to club meetings.

Sinha said Reinharz charged her with organizing the selection of the students. Together with three senators and Vice President Alex Braver '09, she selected the students from a group of 25 applicants, she said. Senator for Ziv Quad Justin Sulsky '09, who helped Sinha with her decisions, said the additional panel members each viewed some of the applications before they came together to interview five finalists.

Rogers said he wanted to be on the committee "to ensure that all students' interests, regardless of what those interests are, were represented." He added that he didn't think the fact "that there's just three of us means that other student input will be ignored."

Rogers said he was still undecided about his opinion on the decision to arm. "I feel like there were issues with the process itself but that the decision .was made by people who have the best interests of the university in mind, and therefore I would tend to say that I don't have a particular problem with the decision."

In an e-mail to the Justice, Familia wrote that she saw two sides to the arming issue. "One is that it is a bad decision to arm Brandeis officers because these students already feel unsafe and intimidated by the officers," she wrote. "On the other hand, with recent tragedies in colleges and Universities, . arming Brandeis officers will delay response time and can be the difference in the outcome if such an event were to occur on our campus."

At last Sunday's senate meeting, Familia said she aimed to "be a messenger of student's concerns." She added that "Shreeya, Matt and I . all recognize that our role in the committee is to convey the information we gather from students."

Some members of Students Opposed to the Decision to Arm, a campus club formed by Ben Serby '10, also applied to serve on the committee.

"I'm disappointed that nobody who's actively been working on the issue in any way is going to be participating on the committee," SODA member Phil Lacombe '10, one of the five finalists for the committe, said.

He added that he thought SODA members could also be open-minded about arming. "Someone from our group should have been selected specifically because it's very important.that you have someone who can take a critical look at whatever anyone suggests," he said. Lacombe said at least one other student from the group had applied.

Braver said the Union's selection panel "didn't immediately rule out anybody from SODA," and looked for students who could advocate for their peers as well as work with administrators.

However, Class of 2008 Senator Darren Gallant, another member of the panel, said "It's hard to choose someone whose organization is against [the] decision." Rogers and Familia, Gallant explained, "were very focused on the implementation, not the [past decision]."

Braver, one of the student representatives on the committee that reached the decision to arm over the summer, said he "found it difficult to communicate with my constituents over the summer because they weren't all here." He said he hoped for better communication this time around.

Sinha said the panel unanimously agreed on the final selection. "They both came from different communities that had issues with the arming of campus police," she said, noting that Familia is involved with the Intercultural Center and Rogers was a member of the Activist Resource Center.

"[Familia] is a student who keeps in mind that many of her peers do not have a one hundred percent positive view of the police," Sulsky said. "We feel it was very, very important to have that type of view on the committee.