The Inter-Residence Hall Association will vote tonight on a bill that will make recommendations to amend an Internet cap policy.

The policy was proposed by ISU Provost Rollin Richmond and was presented by Dorothy Lewis, interim director of Academic Information Technologies, at last week’s IRHA meeting. The policy asks students to cut down on their output to 200 megabytes, but the bill proposes only a 500 megabyte limit.

“I’ve been hearing that the three association governments seem to support the net cap bill, and I hope that IRHA can unite tomorrow night to pass it,” said David Boike, Union Drive Association at-large.

A small number of students will be affected by the Internet cap, Lewis said at last week’s meeting, because a minor percentage of dorm residents have been generating more than one gigabyte in one week. One gigabyte is equivalent to 1,000 megabytes.

“One student had accessed 79 gigabytes in one day in the dorms,” she said last week.

Towers Residence Association President Matt Heerema co-authored the bill with Boike and Director of Special Events Pat Blair. Heerema said he hopes parliament will listen to what their associations have to say.

“I expect none of the controversy from the last meeting,” he said. “However, I do know of a few members of parliament that are sticking to their guns in opposing the policy, regardless of what their constituents told them in Monday’s meetings.”

Parliament members are expected to come more prepared, Blair said, so IRHA can avoid another four-hour meeting.

“Everyone has had a week to ask questions,” he said, “so my gut feeling is that we’ll be able to resolve this fairly quickly.”

Blair also said ISU students seem more accepting of the bill since they’ve had more time to research and ask questions.

“It sounds like the majority of students, once the situation was explained, are happy that they won’t get an error message telling them that a connection couldn’t be established when they are trying to do homework on the Web,” he said.

Another bill, rejecting Academic Information Technologies proposal of limiting Internet use, was introduced at last week, but IRHA Vice President Steve Skutnik said parliament members probably will table it.

“I was researching [the two bills] on Monday night and was wondering if the failing of the first bill would constitute the approval of the second bill,” he said. “Only one of those bills can exist on the floor at one time.”

Boike, Heerema and Blair have set up a Web site to answer any questions about the Internet cap.

“If anyone has any questions regarding this issue, we’ve set up a frequently-asked-questions Web site,” Boike said. The meeting will be at 7 p.m. in the Cardinal Room of the Memorial Union.