No more WebMail, and, hopefully, no more textbook tax.

The Graduate and Professional Student Senate met Monday evening to wrap up some unfinished business in its second-to-last meeting of the year.

During the open forum, Daniel Fischer, senior in agricultural business and president of the Government of the Student Body, spoke to the senate about student debt, city relations and the upcoming university transition away from WebMail.

Fischer said, during his address, that one thing GSB had been doing to try to lower student debt was to eliminate textbook taxes.

“Iowa State averages $31,510 [per student], which is just a lot higher than the national averages, and even our peer institutions,” Fischer said.

“We’ve had a lot of communication with the state government and the Board of Regents to address this issue, and one of the really tangible things that we’re working on is getting rid of textbook taxes.”

Fischer said the other community colleges and private schools in Iowa already have a deal that keeps them from paying textbook taxes, and 18 other states in the nation also have none.

Fischer said Iowa State will be switching to either Gmail or Hotmail in the spring semester.

“You’ll still have that Iowa State e-mail address, it will just be a different graphic interface,” he said.

He wasn’t sure about all of the technical details of the conversion, but he invited the GPSS to visit the GSB meeting Wednesday, where further discussion is part of the agenda.

GPSS President John Schmitz, graduate student in food science and human nutrition-Agriculture and Life Sciences, reported that among some of the radical structural changes that GPSS is undergoing, it had been discussed that capping the number of senators could help with organization.

“We’re looking at capping the senators, for large departments, maybe only having two senators, and smaller departments only having one,” Schmitz said.

After discussion both for and against the issue, Schmitz said he appreciated the feedback. He said the executive board had not yet come up with a solution, but they just wanted to share some of their ideas with the senators.

The safety walk was rescheduled to Thursday and Schmitz encouraged people to attend.