Government of the Student Body senators passed a resolution Wednesday night to establish a joint committee with the Inter-Residence Hall Association on investigating the Department of Residence.

Chris Wisher, off campus council, said the goals of the GSB Senate/Inter-Residence Hall Association Special Committee are clear.

“This committee’s mission is about concerns the students have about the choices of the Department of Residence,” he said.

The purpose of the committee will be to review residence department budgeting procedures to identify trends in where and how money is being spent.

Director of Residence Randy Alexander said the residence department reallocation of funds serves to prevent dramatic increases in student room and board fees.

“We are trying to identify ways to efficiently budget funds,” he said. “When we borrow money, we have to add to student room and board fees.”

The Department of Residence is adopting a five-year plan focusing on efficiently reducing the base budget by $2 million, Alexander said. Ideally, this would eliminate the need to compensate for expenditures by increased student room and board fees.

The reallocation of funds has resulted in decreased spending for student services such as Student Security and CyRide’s Brown Route.

“We added the Brown Route in 1995 to counter the negative perception incoming freshmen and their parents had of Towers,” Alexander said. However, costs of providing the Brown Route have increased an average of about 19 percent each year, Alexander said, largely due to the expansion of the service.

But Alexander said the route had not changed incoming students’ attitudes about Towers, pointing out 88 percent of incoming freshmen in the fall of 1998 requested Union Drive or Richardson Court Association over Towers.

“We had a goal for the route, and it failed,” Alexander said,. “Before we keep raising rates for a service 75 percent of the students don’t use, we’re going to take a look at it.”

Alexander added that reallocating money from less essential, although not necessarily unimportant, areas allowed more funds to be concentrated in areas such as academic support.

Before the senate approved the formation of the committee, an amendment drafted by senator Michel Pooge, off campus council, was added to clarify the committee’s report policy.

“This amendment is very important,” he said. “It makes it clear that [the committee’s] goal is to do a review of the Department of Residence, not to tarnish its image.”

The amendment states that the committee will present written reports to the GSB senate, the IHRA parliament, the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs and the Department of Residence before the same reports are distributed to the media.

In addition, the amendment prohibits the dispensing of any information not included in the written reports to any media outlet, except for media reports approved by the committee. This policy is in effect until the final report is submitted.

“We won’t give out any information that isn’t in the reports,” Pooge said. “If we stick with the facts, we’ll be just fine.”

The resolution to form the committee was further altered with a change in the prospective chairperson for the special committee.

Jonathon Weaver, TRA, who was expected to chair the committee, announced he will not do so.

“We came to the conclusion that, to be productive, we need someone who is not seen as having a vendetta against the Department of Residence to chair [the committee],” he said. “I’m not saying I had a vendetta against the DOR, and I was not seeking anyone’s resignation.”

Instead, “to benefit the committee,” Weaver nominated Alex Olson, off campus council and speaker of the senate, to chair the committee.

Dave Smith, IHRA president, will act as liaison between the committee and the Department of Residence.

“We hope to open the lines of communication with the committee,” said Ricky Cordero, UDA. “We don’t expect to find anything drastic. We do expect to find trends and to compare what we find with other universities. This is totally informational.”

Lee Kaiser, engineering, was the only senator to vote against the bill.

“I personally feel that we are overstepping our bounds,” he said. “I think that’s IRHA’s responsibility to look into the Department of Residence and not necessarily at this junction GSB’s.”