Unfinished business for GSB

Archana Chandrupatla

The Government of the Student Body will hold its second meeting of the semester tonight at 7 in the Campanile Room of the Memorial Union.

There are only two bills on the agenda, both of which are unfinished business. The issues of focus will be the new GSB bylaws and the Catt Hall review committee.

“For the Catt Hall review, the bill is to change the deadline to submit a proposal to the GSB senate,” said Dan Pasker, chairman of the Catt Hall review committee.

“The deadline was supposed to be the fourth GSB meeting, which would have been sometime in September, but now it is going to be pushed to Nov. 18, which is the last meeting before Thanksgiving,” he said.

Pasker said the work on the review of Catt Hall seems to be going well, regardless of problems with time constraints.

“The work is progressing good. The committee is going to meet every week until then, until the report is done,” he said. “We hope to come up with something meaningful to the Catt Hall conflict.”

So far the committee has been working diligently to create the best solution possible, said Matt Ostanik, resource person for the committee.

“The committee feels that in order to do a thorough job, we are going to need more time,” he said. “So far we’ve gone through over 1,000 pages of documentation on Carrie Chapman Catt, and held seven meetings.

“We’ve put in a lot of time on the issue, but there still has to be a lot more work done by the committee until Nov. 1,” Ostanik said.

Ostanik also said he doesn’t think the final decision by the committee should trigger any more conflict among students.

“I don’t believe that will be the case. All this is just another step in moving the issue to a positive decision and bringing it to closure,” he said.

Another topic up for discussion is the bill to pass the new GSB bylaws.

The bill had its first reading last Wednesday, which gave the senate something to contemplate for tonight’s meeting, said Bryan Burkhardt, president of GSB.

“The bills for the bylaws and the Catt Hall review are ready for their second read, and the senate will be able to make their final decisions for both bills at Wednesday’s meeting,” Burkhardt said. “At the meeting, the senate will have the opportunity to make any proposed changes.”

The bylaws were written during the summer by a committee approved by this year’s senate, Burkhardt said.

He said because about one-third of the bylaws deal with funding, the bill may spark some discussion.

“I think there were a couple of changes made on the [funding] section, and some people might want to make some modifications,” he said. “They might want to change it so that it is back to the way it was before.”

Burkhardt said aside from a few minor changes, he feels senators should not have too many problems with the new bylaws.

“I predict that the bylaws will pass,” he said. “There will probably be some amendments proposed that the senate will have to vote on before the bylaws are approved, but there won’t have to be any radical changes made.”

Burkhardt said tonight’s meeting should be an eventful one.

“I am kind of shocked that we don’t have any new business, but it’s probably good not to have too much. We will probably be pretty busy with the new bylaws,” he said. “Overall, I’m hoping for some good, healthy debate.”