At its second-to-last session of the regular school year, Student Senate worked through an abundance of legislation, allocating $1,780.70 to the Department of Multicultural Student Affairs for its upcoming gala entitled “A Touch of Class.” This was Senate’s last financial request from Senate Fund for the year.

President Liz Healy updated senators on her latest meeting with administrators concerning textbooks, revealing a newly created Web resource for students. The Web site smu1.bkstore.com, run by SMU Bookstore, is an online version of the store where SMU students can look up which textbooks are required for their current and future classes. Although the Web site is not fully updated for the fall semester, Healy said she hopes to spread community awareness of the new service. Information about textbooks for the fall semester will be available online once faculty have returned their textbook requests to SMU Bookstore.

Vice President Taylor Russ announced the new 2006-2007 student members of the Board of Trustees and congratulated the senators who were chosen. (Turn to page 3 for the complete list.) Senators approved the executive committee’s recommendation and approved finance chair Lauren Smith as the 2006-2007 Student Senate comptroller.

The Student Organization Committee Chair Lamar Dowling gave Cox Ambassadors a positive recommendation for its first stage in the chartering process. Cox Ambassadors is a campus group that contacts and helps recruit prospective students for the Cox School of Business. Senate will vote next week on the committee’s recommendation.

Scholarship Committee Chair Ben Manthey announced the spring 2006 scholarship winners. For a complete list, look at the bottom of this article.

Finance Committee presented a redrafted bill to fund the Student Diversity Committee $1,370 for its event “A Piece of the Pie.” Senators passed it unanimously.

In new business, the committee presented its recommendation to fund $642 to the Environmental Society and BBA Energy for its global warming debate, among other events it has planned for the Monday following Earth Day. Senators voted to suspend the rules and passed the bill as old business in accordance with the committee’s recommendation, despite a slight debate over its policy not to fund for T-shirts.

Senate heard 10 pieces of legislation from Senate Fund, nine of which were resolutions. Senate passed three resolutions, two of which it suspended the rules, voted and passed yesterday.

After lengthy debate, senators passed a resolution “encouraging the university to prioritize academic ventures when making financial commitments.” In other words, senators are concerned that an increasing number of students are asking Senate to fund departmental events. The resolution requests that the administration consider other ways departments could receive the money they need to put on the events not covered in their budget.

A lengthy debate over the initial wording of the legislation ensued among members of the chamber.

“I don’t think we can say that administrators, professors, advisers, etc. are telling their students to go through Senate because they don’t want to cover the cost,” Healy said. “I think there’s some information that we need that we don’t have.”

One senator echoed the president’s remarks.

“We need to look into this a little more, use different examples and take a more proactive stance,” said Sen. Robin Millican.

Resolution author Sen. Ben Hatch agreed to a formal amendment, which removed specific examples and reworded a few sentences.

In closing, the Senate passed two resolutions honoring outgoing Dedman College Dean Jasper Neel and another commending June Williams for her outstanding service to SMU.

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Spring 2006 scholarship winners:

International Student Scholarship

Prateek Yadav

Phi Delta Theta Endowment Scholarship

Bryan Shnider

Mike Miller-SMU Student Foundation Endowed Scholarship

Lauren Powell

Jack Steiber Scholarship

Sarah Cook

Redman Foundation First-Year Class Scholarship

Tiffany Griffin

Bobby E. Leach Scholarship

Lauren Anderson

Emmie Blaine Continuing First-Year Scholarship

Andres Ruzo

Emmet Conrad Minority Scholarship

Anh Tran

Brian Harelik Memorial Scholarship

Lauren Smith

O. Paul Corely Scholarship

David Fultz