A wide array of bills made it to the floor at the first Student Senate meeting of the semester.

A resolution titled “The Sports Pass Value Protection Resolution,” which calls for an end to neutral-site sporting events, passed with a majority voice vote. The bill asks university administration to return neutral-site games to either team’s home field, citing the recent A&M vs. Arkansas football game from the fall 2015 season, which took place in the AT&T Stadium in Dallas.

The “Management and Information Systems Abbreviation Change Bill,” which calls for university administration to change the class’ abbreviation from ISYS — pronounced identically to the abbreviation for the Islamic extremist terrorist group ISIS — to INFO. The bill passed unanimously.

Additionally, the “Eminent Domain Oppositions Act,” an act which would formally declare that Student Senate is opposed to plans for a high-speed rail linking Houston and Dallas was introduced and referred to the rules and regulation committee. The rail would pass through 11 Texas counties, largely rural, and the author and sponsor of the act felt it was unfair for students to be lumped into the major impression that all students supported the rail. The act will be brought up for a vote at a later general meeting once the committee is done making adjustments to it.

Author of the act Wayne Beckerman, vice president of municipal affairs and public service and administration graduate student, said the act addressed the concern that due to the agriculture history and dependence of the school, it would be counterproductive to support a program which would harm the livelihoods of many agriculturalists along the train’s route.
“On a principle level, Wayne and I wanted to come out and say do not lump students in saying —especially not students from an agricultural and mechanical university — to say we’re okay with farmers losing their land, ranchers losing their land for some company to build a huge train through all of it,” said Carlos Sonka, sponsor of the act, Rules and Regulations Committee Chair and petroleum engineering senior.
Several more bills — most of them focusing on internal Student Senate operations — were debated and student senators elected international studies senior W Lander to the position of  legislative affairs committee chair.