The Graduate and Professional Student Senate passed a bill at 96 percent, with 4 percent abstaining, Monday night regarding its regular financial allocations. The bill allocates $8,863.35 to 16 graduate clubs for funding. The remaining $8,136.65 of the budget will be rolled into the spring semester.

Sen. Ashton Archer opened the floor to discussion about graduate and professional student rights. She and other senators have developed a draft of a graduate student bill of rights.

“This arose after a lot of different issues came up in our department,” Archer said. “After looking around Iowa State’s website and the grad college [website], we realized there wasn’t a bill of rights.”

Archer said she wanted to gather input on the draft before “throwing a bill into the meeting.”

Graduate and professional student rights should include, but aren’t limited to, clearly-communicated requirements; an understanding of the required time to earn a degree and the ability to freely ask questions about that right; the right to change faculty advisers and the right to know about changes to funding regarding research.

The students should also be held responsible for dedicating a reasonable amount of effort toward completing a degree, upholding high equitable standards of research and regularly communicating with an adviser.

“The goal is to address [student rights and responsibilities] in the graduate student handbook,” said Zachary Zenko, GPSS president.

The most important issue this bill of rights could help combat is that graduate students and employees should not be expected to work if they are not legally eligible because of visas or contracts expiring.

“‘You need to be in the lab or else’ is the type of situation we are trying to avoid,” Archer said. “The department was moving extremely slowly to remedy the issue, so we wanted to fix it ourselves.”

Sen. Anna Prisacari, Sen. Nathan Davis and Sen. Michael Belding plan to draft a resolution to address the concerns over the increase in international student tuition and the proposal that went to the Board of Regents.

The resolution will be introduced in November and will discuss the Senate’s concerns about the lack of major public discussion the Regents committees had about the increase. The proposal will be voted on in December by the regents.

Senator representation has been a longstanding issue within GPSS. Currently, one senator represents every 100 graduate and professional students within his or her department.

GPSS wants to rework how its constitution appoints senators. Instead of by department, which is how appointments are currently made, GPSS wants to change to representation by major. This will give a more balanced representation of senators to the graduate college.

Vice President Cory Kleinheksel and Chief Information Officer Bharat Raj Agrawal are actively working toward a solution for this problem.

Guest speaker Jenny Pollard, communications specialist from recreation services, spoke about “main areas that help Iowa State students have fun.”

State Gym, Lied Recreation Athletic Center and Beyer Hall are available for all students who have paid their student fees and include swimming pool access, rental equipment, rock climbing, intramural sports and more.

Pollard also discussed a few issues the recreational centers face: the overcrowding issue that Iowa State has faced since recording its highest enrollment and the concern of student fees increasing with the new additions to the facilities.

“I highly doubt you’ll see an increase in student fees in this type of environment,” Pollard said.

She explained that the renovations at State Gym, Beyer Hall and Lied were “mandated by a student vote,” and that the vote determined whether the fee for the renovations could be assessed.

Pollard also said student fees for recreational services will go to light outdoor areas like the Maple-Willow-Larch fields to accommodate night activities.

The next GPSS meeting will take place at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 30 in the South Ballroom of the Memorial Union.