Amid the hubbub surrounding the Student Senate vote in favor of an LGBT senate seat, an important resolution sneaked its way to passage Tuesday.

Student Senate voted to publicly support the Collegiate Housing and Infrastructure Act, or CHIA. CHIA is a federal bill with bicameral and bipartisan support in Congress, and I am proud to say that SMU is one of the more than 90 universities that will both benefit from and support the bill.

Many student senators were confused by what CHIA entails and probably still are, so let me explain: CHIA will amend the tax code to allow nonprofit entities on university campuses, such as Greek organizations, to use charitable gifts for updates to their housing. This comes at no extra cost to taxpayers.

Currently, alumni can make tax-exempt donations to university student housing but can make donations to nonprofit housing only for academic-related infrastructure, such as a library or study area.

By allowing alumni to make these gifts, universities would instead be able to allocate resources they would normally utilize to update nonprofit housing and use them to make renovations on other on-campus housing.

President R. Gerald Turner has signed letters addressed to Rep. Pete Sessions, Sen. Ted Cruz, and Sen. John Cornyn demonstrating his support of the bill. These letters have been approved by SMU’s legal team, and SMU has publicly supported the bill in previous years according to the Fraternity and Sorority Political Action Committee, the largest PAC dedicated solely to solving higher education issues.

Despite dissent about the process with which the measure was passed, the resolution passed unanimously, according to Senate Secretary Katherine Ladner.

So why should you care?

Currently, almost 10 percent (586 students out of 6,138 undergraduates) of our student body lives in nonprofit housing, namely sorority and fraternity houses. A majority of the fraternity houses and a handful of sorority houses are old, thus making them more susceptible to dangerous structural damage and more likely to have outdated safety equipment.

SMU recently added fire sprinklers to all fraternity houses due to a requirement from University Park, but 50 percent of fraternity houses nationwide do not have them, according to the Fraternal Government Relations Coalition. Retrofitting a house with sprinklers can cost upwards of $400,000.

The bill may also help non-Interfraternity Council and Panhellenic Council sororities raise enough money to have their own house at SMU. Housing for the members of the National Pan-Hellenic Council and the Multicultural Greek Council is in the works, but it’s not a cheap process. CHIA would encourage alumni to donate directly to help these groups.

Who else besides SMU cares?

The congressman who represents SMU in Washington, Rep. Sessions, is one of the main sponsors of the bill.

“Unlike college and university owned housing, not-for-profit student housing entities are currently prohibited from using charitable contributions to build and maintain their facilities,” said Rep. Sessions.

He believes that the bill will, “make college more affordable, reduce long-term student loan debt, create small business jobs nationwide and improve campus safety.”

The passage of CHIA would spur more than $1 billion in capital improvement projects nationwide, helping small businesses and energizing economies, according to the FGRC.

As of April 2013, 197 representatives and 32 Senators are past sponsors of the bill, making CHIA one of the most popular tax code reforms of this decade. It hasn’t passed in previous sessions of Congress because, in my opinion, politicians don’t see college students in their districts as their main voting constituency.

Eighty-eight universities and 41 Greek organizations in three Greek councils will be sending representatives to Washington, D.C. in April to gain support for the bill.

I am SMU’s representative and one of Alpha Chi Omega’s advocates for the lobbying push. I have documented the improvements that many of our fraternity houses need: repairs after electrical fires due to faulty wiring in the FIJI house, a kitchen upgrade for the Beta Theta Pi house so their chefs can cook in their facility and repairs to the balcony of the Kappa Sigma house to make it more structurally sound.

With the residential commons system requiring more students to live on campus, nonprofit housing like Greek houses is going to be a hot commodity. The ability for alumni to donate directly to these improvements would lower the cost of both on-campus and Greek housing and the threat of dangerous living conditions at SMU.

Yezbick is a junior majoring in journalism.