The Student Government Association passed two bills and one amendment Thursday concerning the appeal policy on parking tickets and the SGA's representation of graduate students.
Brandon Gravley, SGA vice president, said the parking tickets bill was a check on the judiciary committee's policy of posting appeals after students receive a ticket.
The bill, also called the "Due Process in Parking Act," states that student court has seven days to post a traffic appeal. If the appeal is posted within the seven days, then the student and the court will deal with the issue accordingly.
However, if the appeal is not posted on SGA's wall for more than a week the appeal will be granted and the citation will disappear from the student's records.
A similar act will also happen if 15 business days pass and the court has not yet to deal with the appeal, even if it has already been posted.
Gravley said the bill will apply for the remainder of the year, but he will try to amend it next year so it will not be forgotten.
Gravely also said this matter came to his attention after the summer sessions, when several students were affected.
"There were a lot of complaints of 'I have appealed my ticket and it hasn't been posted yet,'" Gravley said.
John Dickey, a senator for SGA and a senior political science major, said summer students were easily affected because some of them did not attend The University on a regular basis.
"We wanted to make it fair," Dickey said. "We feel students should be given the right amount of time to appeal."
Dickey said he understood the pressure, but the judicial court must do its job.
"This was a big concern for myself and members of the committee," he said.
However, despite the concern rising from SGA, Nicole Taylor, a senior criminal justice major and the chief justice for student court, said the bill was not necessary.
"Court is held every Monday at 3:30 p.m.," Taylor said. "But I think students do have a right to know (the process)."
The last bill and amendment SGA passed were meant to give graduate students more of a voice on campus, even though SGA are undergraduate student dominated, according to Gravley and Hubert Chen, a doctorate student in experimental psychology.
"It's basically an extension between the SGA and GSA (Graduate Student Assocation)," Chen said. "It's to improve the whole system, where graduate students feel they're not represented."
Gravley said in the past he had received several complaints about the SGA not understanding the need of graduate students to travel.
"We do represent the undergraduates and graduates," Gravley said.
Chen said SGA has only one graduate student seat and wanted them to have more of a say in what could be determined. He also said the bill established a committee where the majority would be graduate students.
The bill states the establishment of a graduate travel committee that will be under the GSA. The travel committee will oversee all graduate students as well as law school student travel requests.
SGA also passed 30 more bills allocating travel funds for graduate students.
"It encourages the graduate students to be more involved with the graduate student travel fund," Chen said. "I think this is definitely a step to the right direction."
