The Government of Student Body passed a bill to fund nearly $20,000 for the rewriting of the student organization online database.

This funded several “bells and whistles” to not only bring the current system up to date, but to also make overall improvements.

An amendment made by Sen. Barry Snell lowered the GSB contribution from $24,300 to $19,300.

The original bill called for $24,400, but Director of the Memorial Union Richard Reynolds agreed to chip in $5,000 from the Memorial Union Operations Budget.

“This is not a request from the student activities center to fund the administration, this is to bring an aged system up to speed,” said Director of Student Activities George Micalone.

“I would definitely urge a yes vote on this,” Sen. Scott Broady said.

Sen. Trevor Lund said he had spoken with his peers, and they did not view this as a necessary project.

“I spoke to some people about this, a lot of the people were confused as to what the purpose was of rewriting this,” Lund said. “A lot of them thought it was fine the way it was, and they were able to use it for what they needed.”

Sen. Gage Kensler agreed with Lund’s remarks.

“I agree with Sen. Lund; they don’t necessarily think this should be coming out of student fee money. They think it sounds like a good idea; when they hear how much it cost they are adamantly against it,” Kensler said.

A bill calling for the same rewrite, plus a photo gallery option, was passed earlier this semester, and then vetoed by former GSB President Jared Knight.

The senate failed at overturning the veto. Sen. Khayree Fitten reminded the new senate of all of this, and urged for a “yes” vote on this bill.

“If we purely did what other senators did, there wouldn’t be a need for us to be here. Carry precedent with a little bit of weight, but don’t think you need to be bound by it,” Kensler said.

Throughout the discussion there were also talks of cutting certain line items from the bill, specifically a $2,100 attendance tracking, card swipe system.

“If you are going to do this, I recommend doing it all now and not going through all the line items,” said GSB President Spencer Hughes. “It will make it last longer so you won’t have to do it again. If GSB as a whole wants to do this, the best time to do it is now. As we get closer to regular allocations in March, there will be less money.”

The rewrite of the database is a three-to-six-month project, but the start date is unknown.

ISU IT Services will be performing the rewrite, and it is unknown how many jobs are in front of this one.

The system may or may not be ready in time for Clubfest in September. However, it should be done by the end of the fall 2013 semester.

The bill passed on a 22-9-1 vote at Wednesday night’s GSB Senate meeting.