The Government of the Student Body is considering the allocation of nearly $20,000 to buy new laptops for the Memorial Union.

The senate will be deciding whether $18,334.50 will be taken from the Capital Projects Account to buy new laptops for the Student Activities Center. GSB hopes the Graduate and Professional Student Senate will be able to help out with the cost of the 15 Dell Latitude D630s replacement computers.

“We requested that the GPSS pay about $6,000 for the new laptops,” said Tom Danielson, GSB finance director and senior in civil engineering.

Rebecca Brown, treasurer of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate and graduate student in entomology, said they will vote on the request at the end of the month.

The current laptops are unusable because of four or five years of heavy student use, said George Micalone, program coordinator for Memorial Union.

Myers said GSB could have provided funding on new laptops last year, however there were a number of other financial projects that prevented the organization from allocating funds to the cause.

“The need [for the laptops] is there,” Micalone said. “People ask for the laptops every day.”

An estimated 90 students per week check out the laptops. As a result, the laptops have been damaged.

“The battery and power cords don’t work and there are screws coming out of the laptops,” said Ryan Myers, graduate senator of GSB and graduate student in accounting. “There was a significant breakdown in the last two years. The problem has been progressing.”

The laptops were first purchased four years ago, thanks to the Computation Advisory Committee’s effort to supply students with more options for laptop check out, Micalone said. The laptops available for check out in the Memorial Union are offered for a one-day check out period, instead of the week-long check out available through the Durham Center.

Trevin Ward, GSB representative on the Computation Advisory Committee and senior in politcal science, said they were not able to fund laptops in the Memorial Union because the portion of the committee’s budget that is available to allocate to student organizations did not cover the costs of requests made from other organizations. The laptops in the Memorial Union were not a high priority to fund because the CAC intended to purchase new laptops for the Solution Center, which had a higher priority.

In addition to funding the new laptops, GSB plans to discuss funding for the Malaysian Cultural Night. The Association of Malaysian Students at ISU at Iowa State missed the regular allocations process last spring. Yee Gin Kok, treasurer of AMSISU said she was not sure why the regular allocations process was missed. Gin Kok was not involved last year when the group would have gone through the allocations process.

Chandra Peterson, inter-residence hall senator, sophomore in political science and author of the bill, said she did not know for sure why the groups missed last year’s allocations, but that what might have happened is because the committee did not realize they needed to apply for the regular allocations process.

The AMSISU intends to find sponsors to help fund the cultural night. Gin Kok said they have found sponsors in AMSISU alumni who may consider funding the cultural night. With the addition of potential funds from the GSB, AMSISU expects that the Malaysian Cultural Night will be able to occur.