Student Senate members finished approving every member of the Student Action Team and announced an academic program to improve Registered Student Organization members’ GPA at their meeting Wednesday.

The senate approved 19 more Student Action Team members.

Executive Vice President Mitch Gurick, the chairman of the Student Action Team, formed the team in order to lobby in Springfield for Eastern issues.

Gurick said the team is comprised of 23 members, but not all of them will be going to lobby.

Only 16 members will be able to go to Springfield on Oct. 23 to lobby.

Gurick said the Student Action Team executive board will be deciding the best candidates for the trip if too many want to go.

Lauren Price, the vice-chairwoman of the team and a junior biological science major, said they are looking for a person with communication skills.

“I don’t need someone who is going to be nervous,” Price said.

Gurick said he wanted as many people to join as possible to insure they would have a full team going to Springfield.

“I still want their input on issues affecting Eastern,” Gurick said. “I am assuming people won’t be able to go because of their class schedules.”

The Student Senate academic affairs committee revealed that they are starting Midterm-Mania next week for the senate. Midterm-Mania is a program to improve academic success for students who are members of an organization.

Shirmeen Ahmad, the committee chairwoman and a journalism and political science major, said the committee is starting the program using the senate members as a trial run to work out any problems that might arise.

“We want to have something big that we can implement all around campus, but before we already do that we want to have a test,” Ahmad said. “Student government is our test.”

Ahmad said they will be pretending each committee is a RSO.  

Midterm-Mania is more of a competition between the committees in order to increase student’s grades.

The committee who has a higher percentage of participants with a 3.25 GPA or more will win prizes.

Ahmad said the committee will look at the highest GPAs and not just the percentages.

She said they have not figured out the prizes for the team.

The GPA’s will be tabulated after finals week.

Student Senate will be meeting again at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the Arcola-Tuscola room in the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

Jarad Jarmon can be reached at 581-2812 or jsjarmon@eiu.edu.