The Student Senate meeting began at 6 p.m. on Monday, March 10 in the Dakota Ballroom.

A majority of the meeting was spent reintroducing, discussing and voting on four pieces of legislation. Information Technology (IT) and Finance Commission (FC) each reintroduced two of the pieces of legislation. 

Resolution 68-R-10, titled In Support of the Use of Live Captioning in Classrooms, was reintroduced by IT Director Kyler Simonet after being tabled at the Feb. 24 senate meeting. 

The resolution was developed as a result of ITs’ 2024-2025 Student Technology Survey results, which found that 906 of the 1,217 students who took the survey said they prefer to use subtitles when watching online materials for class.

The resolution encourages the use of live captioning in classrooms when using Microsoft PowerPoint, a program all students, faculty and staff members have access to, for any and all on-campus activities and lectures.

IT has determined that roughly 40 out of the 250 learning spaces on campus are not currently equipped to allow for this feature.

“We will hopefully be working together to fund some more webcams and microphones that would allow learning spaces to have the necessary hardware to utilize the live captioning feature,” Simonet said. 

While the use of live captioning will not be required following the passing of this resolution, Simonet said the IT commission will still encourage it.

“The live captioning feature isn’t the greatest at understanding things like equations and displaying them like how they should be,” Simonet said. “This is why we’re encouraging it rather than making it a requirement.”

The resolution passed in a vote of 34-0-2.

Bill 68-B-8, titled Three New Organized Activities Fiscal Year 2026 Allocations, was reintroduced by FC Intern Isabelle Shepard.

At the Nov. 18 senate meeting, the senate adopted the FC Organized Activity Budget recommendation in 68-B-4 in a vote of 30-0-2. The budget allocated $53,000 to Equity in Student Matters (ESM) to distribute to the departments funded under ESM, including Multicultural Student Services (MSS), Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) and Centering Native Voices.

It was later determined that grouping the money was inefficient, and ESM has now been reabsorbed by senate. On Dec. 2, senate adopted the creation of three new organized activities named MSS Student Programming, SSD Student Programming and Centering Native Voices in 68-B-6 in a vote of 28-0-2.

Bill 68-B-8 would allocate $18,250 to MSS Student Programming, $16,500 to SSD Student Programming and $18,250 to Centering Native Voices in place of allocating $53,000 to ESM.

“SSD uses it for the sensory space. Plus they have two speakers coming in next year,” FC Director Cole Morehouse said. “Centering Native Voices has a lot of series on campus that introduce Native American culture back to Eau Claire.”

Senator Ethan Brunke, who attended the deliberation on new allocations, said equity was considered throughout the process.

“While I can’t say much about the actual deliberation process as it was a closed session, I can say that equity was in mind when going over all of the money amounts,” Brunke said. “I believe these are all considering asks and requirements and that they are all fair allocations.”

The bill passed in a vote of 34-0-2.

Bill 68-B-9, titled Addition to Bylaws of Chapter IV, Section 17, Part 6, was reintroduced by Director Morehouse.

The bill is an extension of 68-R-9, which supported the creation and addition of the Campus Harvest Food Pantry Committee within senate and passed in a vote of 32-0-2. 

Since the passing, two things have been added to the committee outline. The committee will now be dually chaired by the finance director and Campus Harvest Food Pantry Director Sarah Snyder. Additionally, a number of the university’s centers will sit on the committee as a voting member because of the location of the pantry and the contributions Blugold Dining makes.

“I think that this is a really important bill to pass. It’s working toward a goal of increasing accessibility and availability of food to the food pantry for students,” Senator Siena Emerson said. “We’re able to provide this. Hopefully students will be aware of the resources they have on campus.”

The bill passed in a vote of 34-0-2.

Bill 68-B-10, titled Approval of the Student Technology Fee Budget for Fiscal Year 2026, was reintroduced by Director Simonet.

Chief Information Officer Kent Gerberich makes up the budget each year and brings it to the IT commission to review and approve it and later send it to the senate for final approval. 

The fees go toward things like IT staff and student employee wages, technology updates in the library and upkeep of technology equipment available for checkout.

“In the UW System, we are maybe one of the only schools where student input is still considered in budgets like this,” Simonet said. “So the fact that we still sent this through IT and through senate is a testament to the fact that Kent and all of LTS want student input on these matters.”

The bill passed in a vote of 34-0-2.

Following old business, senate moved onto personnel. Senator Matthew Lehner and Academic Affairs Director Dylan Baker were appointed to the elections committee. The committee deals with election rule violations, election rule changes and counting the votes during senate elections.

The senate adjourned at 7:12 p.m. and will reconvene at 6 p.m. on Monday, March 24 in the Dakota Ballroom. 

Braun can be reached at braunee6220@uwec.edu.