Walking over trash in Campustown may soon be a thing of the past.

The Student Affairs Commission will be meeting for the second time ever at 7 p.m. on Thursday in the Ames City Council chambers.

This week’s agenda looks a lot like the last meeting’s agenda. Discussion of nonalcoholic events, public restrooms in Campustown and litter and cleanliness in Campustown will all be revisited at tonight’s meeting, said Ames City Manager Steve Schainker.

At the last meeting, he said, these issues were introduced and ideas were brainstormed, and this week will be follow-up.

Emily Jensen, GSB president and senior in political science, said the reason why the issues are being revisited this week is because they didn’t have all of the information at the previous meeting and members went out to research some of the ideas that were discussed.

“What we’ll do is we’ll take the discussion where we left off last time,” she said.

Jensen said she thinks the direction of this meeting will be different from last time.

“Changing it, I guess, from a brainstorming board discussion session to more of an action- based focus, I think, is the goal,” she said.

In addition to all of those items, Schainker said, the commission will also discuss other possible projects it might want to pursue.

The City Council must approve any project before the commission can proceed.

Craig Buske, GSB ex-officio City Council liaison and senior in political science, said the City Council voted on Tuesday night to refer another project to the commission.

Buske was recently elected the chairman of the Student Affairs Commission, and Jensen was elected the vice-chairwoman.

A few years ago, the City Council changed certain positions on various councils and boards to one-year terms rather than three-year terms to encourage students to serve.

However, student interest in these positions has not been high and the City Council will have the commission look into the issue, Buske said.

All of the commission members brainstormed possible solutions to the issues they were assigned at the last meeting and went out and researched the feasibility of the commission’s ideas. For Schainker, this included researching solutions for the public restrooms in Campustown.

“I was supposed to check on a number of things about possible locations of public restrooms,” he said.

Schainker said he also looked into something called water closets – European-designed, single-person-type bathrooms.

Schainker is in the process of contacting the Juvenile Office in Ames to see if individuals convicted of certain crimes assigned with public service duty would be able to pick up trash in Campustown.

Buske said he talked to individuals and got input on what they thought should be done with these issues, especially with cleanliness in Campustown.

“I looked at some similar projects people have taken on and just gotten a lot of opinions of community members about how they thought that could be accomplished,” Buske said. “I talked to a lot of students about that [as well].”

Jensen did most of her research on the cleanliness of Campustown. This included speaking to students and also going out to Campustown at different times to see when litter is the worst and why.

“I went out with a few other students on different weekend evenings, looking at litter in different areas on Welch and at different times, trying to determine when it gets the dirtiest,” she said.