Thursday night's SGA meeting was very active, with three bills decided on and campaign finance limits hammered down.

The first of the three bills was the Dean-Craig Bill, proposed by Senators Dusty Dean and Elizabeth Craig.

The bill would require each of the five committees to bring at least one bill to senate a year. They said that the main purpose of the bill was to get SGA members more involved in senate activities.

The bills would not count if only one student on the committee proposed it; in order to count, the bill must make it past the committee before it is proposed to the senate. If a committee does not present any type of bill by March 1 of the year, each member would be penalized with an absence. The bill can take any one of four forms; recommendations, proposals, resolutions, or bills.

SGA passed the Dean-Craig Bill.

The next bill discussed was the Raby Bill, which was proposed by Senator Elaine Raby. The bill would have pushed Thanksgiving vacation back one day, so that students and faculty would have the Wednesday before Thanksgiving Day off.

Raby had contacted SAACS, who is responsible for UTM's accreditation; they found no problem with Raby's proposal.

SGA voted to refer the Raby Bill to Academic Affairs. "We're fully prepared to lobby the faculty senate to get this [bill] passed," said Raby after the meeting.

The final bill proposed was a revision of last month's priority registration bill. This was proposed by Senators Jennifer Ogg and Kevin Anderson.

The bill would allow students in the University Scholars and Honors Seminar programs to sign a form, which would temporarily give them 30 more hours than they currently have.

This would have allowed them to register before non-honors students in their same grade level. The priority registration would begin after a student had successfully completed a semester in either of the programs.

Ogg said that she proposed the bill because of the odd times that the required Honors courses were given at. Also, she pointed out that many other universities in Tennessee have similar policies.

This bill had to be voted on in a role call vote; it was narrowly defeated, with eight nays and seven yeas.

Also, throughout the meeting, both Vice President Nikki Draper and President Eric Tolbert discussed how this week's Civil Rights Conference had gone. While they said that the events had gone very well, they were unhappy with the lack of student attendance at some events.

They also pointed out that two events were still left for the Conference.

On Friday, Feb. 28, Professor of History David Coffey will preside over readings of student papers on civil rights, New Voices: Student Scholarship on the Civil Rights Movement. This will be Friday at 4 p.m. in the Humanities Auditorium.

On Saturday, there will be a field trip to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis and the Fayette County Civil Rights Community Center. The trip will leave at 7:30 a.m.

Other business discussed:

• Chancellor of Student Affairs Katie High said that, contrary to rumors, next year's lease cost for Martin Place has not been decided yet. Also, she said that the UT Board of Trustee's suggested budget cuts went up from 8.8 percent to nine percent. However, she said that what will be cut is still not set in stone yet, nor is the nine percent cut.
• After the three bills, it was decided that SGA needed to clarify what the spending limit on the upcoming campaigns would be. After some discussion, SGA finally decided on a $250 spending limit on campaigns, though it was pointed out that donations could be accepted.
• Some of the decisions made at the Student/City of Martin Council Meeting were discussed. The main issue was a possible contest for UTM students to design a symbol for the newly named Skyhawk Parkway.

President Eric Tolbert was pleased with the meeting. "I think we got a lot of issues put out…and got everyone in senate involved," said Tolbert after the meeting.