The Veishea Task Force met for the final time on the evening of June 26, ahead of the June 30 deadline to make its recommendation to President Steven Leath.

The meeting was set up to include a short public overview of the tasks laid before the committee prior to going into closed session to deliberate on the final recommendation.

Tom Hill, chairman of the task force and senior vice president for student affairs, said that the task force was exempt from public records laws and possessed the right to meet in a closed session.

“We serve an advisory function only,” said Michael Owen, Faculty Senate representative. “We’re not making any decisions here.”

Hill, however, said that Leath will “value the opinion of this group” and will “weigh the recommendations very, very heavily.”

The meeting was only open to the public for the first 20 minutes, though that was cut short as the audience did not contribute any further comments before the closed session began.

The task force has met every Thursday since its formation in April, following the riot in Campustown that resulted in one ISU student being severely injured and the rest of the Veishea celebration being canceled.

In addition to collecting a large amount of outside information such as weather data, student enrollment statistics and police reports, the task force also hosted four open forums and accepted online comments. It also discussed student psychology with Craig Anderson, distinguished professor of psychology and a member of the 2004 Veishea Task Force.

The last several meetings have seen the task force formulate plans for a new kind of celebration. At the June 5 meeting, the committee members voted unanimously against continuing Veishea in its current form; at the June 12 meeting, they decided to discontinue the name Veishea and instead focus on creating a “new overarching university-wide event.”

Last week, with the June 30 deadline quickly approaching, a subcommittee was formed to deliberate on how to address student behavior. As a consensus on the structure of the proposed new event was also not reached, the executive committee that met outside the regular task force meetings decided on the direction of the new event.

Both of these separate committees discussed their plans during the closed session of the June 26 meeting.

Hill said that there shouldn’t be a need for the executive committee to continue meeting after June 26’s session. A number of the task force members mentioned in earlier meetings that they might be interested in forming a “minority recommendation” in the event that a clear consensus is not reached.

The task force is set to make its official recommendation to Leath on June 30.