After a slow start to writing bills this year, Associated Student Government senators will step up the pace at tonight’s Senate meeting by introducing three new bills — a number equal to the total number senators have seen so far this quarter.
In addition, a resolution to change the name of Norris University Center to Norris Student Union will be reintroduced after it failed to gain support in a hasty debate last week.
Two new bills come from the academic committee’s ongoing work on ideas expressed at the start of the academic year, said Tamara Kagel, ASG’s academic vice president .
One bill, written by Slivka Residence Hall Sen. Gokul Kumar, would call for improving CAESAR by adding links to Course and Teacher Evaluation Council assessments alongside classes.
“This would make registration a lot easier for students, especially when they’re hard-pressed to register within their time slot,” said Kagel, a Communication junior. “This will make the whole process a lot faster and speed things up to make it and easier for them.”
Kumar said working with the Office of the Registrar will make the addition easy, and administrators are optimistic about making the service available to students.
The academic committee also is introducing a bill that would make old tests available to all students.
Right now, only residential colleges, sororities and fraternities have archives of old tests for students to use while studying, Kagel said. The bill asks professors to submit exams to University Library, which would allow all NU students to access tests electronically and physically.
“This bill addresses the disparity we see in the test file system currently,” Kagel said. “We see the benefits of opening up this option to everyone — especially when professors encourage students to use tests to study from. We (would) like to see them in a centralized location.”
ASG’s student services committee will introduce a bill to clean up the Evanston Campus by making more trash cans and ashtrays available, said Mike Fong, student services vice president.
He said the six committee members who wrote the bill walked around campus to evaluate the number of trash cans available. The idea to provide more ashtrays resulted from a new policy that allows dorms to vote on whether or not to allow smoking.
At tonight’s meeting, ASG senators also will debate and vote on a bill to filter spam e-mails introduced last week by Middle-Eastern Students Association Sen. Bassel Korkor.
“It’s just an inconvenience for students to receive junk mail,” said Korkor, a Weinberg senior. “Just like the university provides virus-protection software, they should also provide spam software.”
