The proposal for four office hours failed at last week’s meeting, so it will be re-worded for this week’s meeting along with four other new pieces of legislation.

Student Senate will meet at 7 tonight in the Arcola-Tuscola Room of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

This proposal will say that two office hours will have to be served in the Student Activity Center and two more should be served anywhere outside of it and those hours would count as service hours.

“This is one proposal that will probably have the most controversy,” said Student Senate Speaker Isaac Sandidge. “The senators will hopefully be more open to this new wording.”

This proposal will state that instead of having to complete four office hours, the senators will be required to have four service hours, which can include anything up to doing things for their committees or going to hall council meetings.

“More senators are on board now because of the flexibility of the proposal,” Sandidge said. “The obvious controversy is because of the rationale. People don’t realize the rationale is actually not talking about the bylaw change, though.”

Problems that came up last week with office hours for Student Senate members was that the hours were being changed from two to four hours and senators would not have enough time to spend four hours in the office and might spend them doing things that were unproductive or would not have enough work.

Sandidge also said they did not like the wording of the proposal and some did not like having a Student Senate member that had only been on senate for half a semester as a co-signer of such a drastic proposal.

“I personally was not fond of the old proposal myself and thought it needed some work,” Sandidge said. “What should be debated is the change and not the rationale or the author, though.”

If the new proposal passes, then another amendment will need to be made to change office hours to service hours within the Internal Affairs Committee.

If it fails, this amendment will be taken off the agenda.

Additionally, since the boxes, which used to be distributed around campus for suggestions about improving Student Senate, were removed from student government at last week’s meeting, the “grievance program” will now be in the hands of the speaker of the senate, Sandidge, instead of the Chair of the Student Relations Committee.

The “grievance program” is for students to send their complaints or suggestions to Student Senate members.

“I will be responsible for e-mails about student government from now on if this proposal passes,” Sandidge said. “I have more understanding of what all the committees are doing than one particular chair.”

University Development and Recycling will also bring forth a resolution to have permission to put out a survey about recycling at the meeting and the residence hall proposal will be edited again to say all Student Senate members, regardless of their district, have the opportunity to go to hall council meetings and have them count as their office hours.

“The other proposal only said that on-campus members could go to these meetings,” Sandidge said. “Now any member can do so as they so choose.”

In addition the old proposal to have bylaws only be voted on at the last four weeks of a semester will be voted on at tonight’s meeting and after the pre-constitutional revision committee will have its first meeting after the Student Senate meeting.

Heather Holm can be reached at 581-7942 or haholm@eiu.edu.