In what Speaker of the Senate Adam Weyhaupt called a “momentous change,” the Student Senate Wednesday passed a bylaw change that will create a council to be made up of delegates from all 132 Recognized Student Organizations.

The senate also recommended that Assistant Residence Directors be eligible to purchase staff parking permits, welcomed a new off-campus senate member, recommended that an off-campus student be placed on the parking committee, and tabled bills that would allocate funds to the Miss Black EIU pageant, a forum on the Freshman Writing Portfolio, an upcoming mayoral debate, and voter registration.

The RSO council, to be composed of a delegate from each RSO, as well as five senate members, replaces a system where each senate member is required to represent one RSO. Since there are only 30 senate members, said Marty Ruhaak, co-sponsor of the bylaw change, this system does not do enough to represent all the RSOs.

“We should make an effort to represent everyone,” Ruhaak said.

Ruhaak said most RSOs have voiced support for the proposal.

The senate also approved a recommendation to the parking committee to allow ARDs to apply for staff parking permits.

Staff permits would help ARDs to fulfill their responsibilities, said Robbins, co-sponsor of the resolution.

“If you were an ARD in Stevenson Hall, and you had an emergency and had to go to Carman Hall, you would have to find your car,” Robbins said.

Another resolution passed by the senate is a recommendation to the President’s Council that the parking committee add an off-campus student position.

Right now, senate member Joe Robbins said, there are only three students on the 10-member committee: one from Student Government, one from the Residence Hall Association, and one from the Graduate Student Advisory Council.

Robbins said that off-campus students should be represented on the committee as well.

“(Off-campus students) are concerned because they have difficulty finding parking spots,” Robbins said.

The addition of another student member would also help give students better representation on the committee, Robbins said.

If approved by the President’s Council, the new position would be open to all off-campus students, Robbins said.

In other business, a new on-campus senate member, Ashanda Simmons, a junior African-American studies and mathematics major, took her seat on the senate. Weyhaupt said he appointed Simmons to fill a position opened up when the senate decided to relabel an off-campus seat to an on-campus position.

The senate also tabled two bills – one allocating $100 to place an advertisement in the Miss Black EIU pageant program, the other giving a total of $200 toward a forum on the Freshman Writing Portfolio, upcoming mayoral debates and voter registration.

Kristen Rutter, student vice president for academic affairs, said the writing portfolio forum will take place on Feb. 22 at 7 p.m. in the Carman Hall lobby.

Hugh O’Hara, chair of the senate’s external relations committee, said the mayoral debates are scheduled for sometime in mid-March, in conjunction with a drive to register students to vote in the city election, set for April 3.

At the start of the meeting, the senate observed a moment of silence for Mack Hollowell. Hollowell, who recently passed away, was the Board of Trustee’s first chairman.