The Student Senate approved a senate bill for releasing funds for date rape drug testing kits and coasters with 19 yeses and one abstain on Wednesday night at the second Senate-On-the-Go meeting in Stevenson Hall.

The Senate approved the bill by a vote of 19-0-1, with Senator Morgaine Cornish abstaining.

The Senate suspended the bylaw which states the senate must have two meetings before they vote on a Senate Bill to approve Senate Bill 21-22-10 due to next week being Spring Break. The senate suspended the bylaw unanimously.

The bill allows date rape drug kits to be placed in various locations around campus and in the community. These locations include the center desk of Booth Library, the Medical Center in the HERC and in the Women’s Resource Center of the Center for Gender and Sexual Diversity. Other potential locations include both Pemberton and Andrews Halls.

There will be 500 kits and 100 coasters available. While they do the same thing, they have a few differences visually.

Kits have two tests each, where users put a few drops of a drink into two dots. If they stay the same color, the test is negative whereas if the test turns dark blue, the drink is positive for one of two date rape drugs: ketamine or GHB.

Speaker of the Senate Jasmine Yusef thinks it is vital to have these kits on campus. 

“I think it’s immensely important to have these kits on campus, specifically because it’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month coming up,” Yusef said. “But also for college students, predominantly female college students are more likely to be sexually assaulted in a college setting and anything we can do to prevent that should be done.”

There were appointments to the Constitution Revision Committee. 

The appointees were Payton Ade, executive vice president, Yusef, Senators Jade Moffett and Connor Mitlyng, Residence Hall Association President Benjamin Drake and LASO President Kyara Morales-Rodriguez.

This committee reviews and sees if changes or updates need to be made to it.

The committee would not be able to update the bylaws without at least seven people, according to the Student Senate Constitution’s bylaws.

At the next meeting, which takes place March 23, Mark Hudson, the Executive Director of Housing and Dining Services, will be visiting the Senate to talk about the Bond Revenue Committee and how that will impact students living on campus for the 2022-2023 school year.

According to Moffett, the committee will consider room and board rates for students living on campus, residence hall updates and remodels for incoming students and each room having a micro fridge in the room upon arrival on campus.

There were three giveaways at the meeting for audience members since this was the second Senate-On-the-Go meeting this semester. 

The prizes were a snack bag, two $10 gift cards to Martin Luther King Jr. University Union bookstore and the final giveaway was a windbreaker.

Hiep Nguyen, a freshman secondary education major, won the snack bag, Kristal Munoz, a junior criminology and criminal justice major, won the gift cards and Cayleigh Rath, a sophomore chemistry and Spanish double major, won the windbreaker.

Katja Benz can be reached at 581-2812 or at kkbenz@eiu.edu.