The newly inaugurated Government of the Student Body Senate ended its first session of the year with the creation of two ad hoc senate committees, on diversity and government relations Wednesday in the Campanile Room of the Memorial Union.

GSB Speaker of the Senate Tony Luken created the two committees under his authority as speaker, which are stipulated in GSB’s bylaws.

The GSB executive cabinet currently has government relations and student diversity executive cabinet directors who work on these issues for GSB.

“I’m just giving the [cabinet] directors people to go to bounce ideas off of,” Luken said. “I’m sure the cabinet will do a great job, but at the same time the senate wants to give it’s support and offer its opinion on these issues.”

Vice Speaker of the Senate William Rock said these committees are not set up as replacements to the executive branch’s cabinet directors, but are created to be supplementary committees. He said the committees will work with the cabinet directors.

Rock was appointed by Luken as chairman of the Senate Government Relations Committee. Rock said the committee will create a group that will work with the other Regent universities to lobby the Iowa Legislature for higher education funding.

“This isn’t an attempt at all to undermine executive authority, it’s just something we wanted to look into enough that we thought [government relations] director [Angela] Groh needed assistance,” Rock said.

Former director of student diversity and newly elected Richardson Court senator Karla Hardy was appointed as the chairwoman of the Senate Student Diversity Committee. Luken said Hardy was qualified for the position because of her past experience on the issue.

Hardy said this committee will peruse further efforts in helping to educate Iowa State on diversity-related issues.

All 37 senators agreed to the appointment of next year’s finance committee, under the direction of David Boike, finance director.