The weekly gathering of the Missouri Southern Student Senate was called to order Wednesday night at the Billingsly Student Center. The session was the body’s third meeting of the year.

After calling role, the Senate’s first order of business was unanimously passing an appropriations bill brought before the committee during last week’s assembly. The bill awards $788 to Southern’s Student Nursing Association. The payment will fund the trip of the SNA’s six-member executive board to a nursing conference in St. Louis. The University reimburses road trip costs at a rate of 37 cents per mile. The SNA will use the remainder of the money for hotel costs and convention fees.

“It’s a good thing when we can send these students to a conference where they can get valuable experience,” said Senator Tommy Jung.

“It’s a great cause,” said Senate Vice President Saif Farag. “It is going to benefit their group as well as Southern. Nursing is a big program here, and they will be representing Southern, which is a big deal. We’re a midsized school that some areas in Missouri don’t even know about us, so to have students go out and advocate for us a great thing.”

In old business, the motion to pass this year’s Student Senate bylaws also passed with a unanimous vote. The Senators received a copy of the bylaws during last week’s session.

In other news, Student Senate President Kyle Prisock announced that all portions of Student Senate meetings and deliberations will now be completely open to anyone wishing to attend. Prisock suddenly closed last week’s appropriations committee meeting and asked a Chart reporter to leave just as the committee was about to call the vote.

“We visited with the attorneys from Missouri Southern,” said Prisock. “And while it doesn’t appear that there’s anything requiring us not to have closed meetings according to the law, in the spirit of good faith and cooperation, we’re going to go ahead at this time and allow meetings to remain open.”

For the record, it remains the Chart’s contention that the law does prohibit the Senate from closing any meetings except under certain very specific circumstances, which the body failed to meet last week.

After Prisock’s announcement, the abbreviated Senate session came to a close.

“With this being the first month of meetings, deliberations will be short,” said Farag. “Senators are still trying to catch their breath and understand what Senate is. After a while we will see senators coming out with resolutions they want to see and have students around campus getting more involved. “

The Senate’s next meeting will take place at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 7, in the Billingsly Student Center conference room.