On Oct. 16, 2013 at 5:19 p.m. the third meeting of the Tarleton State University House of Representatives was called to order.

With a busy meeting schedule, the session lasted an hour and thirty minutes.

The most notable event was the motion to amend the House of Representative Bylaws.

Colton Driver of the Young Conservatives of Texas and the Speaker of the House Granger Boen proposed changes to the bylaws after reviewing and consideration.

“Colton and I looked at some things that need to be changed within the bylaws, a couple of things that didn’t really make sense,” Boen said.

The changes made include power given to the Speaker to create committees as necessary, changing voting practices of the House body to give the Funding Review Committee greater power in regards to funding requests, changes regarding how long an organization must exist to receive funding, and how often an organization can ask for funding from the House.

The final change proposed was the change to the power of removal of key position of the House. Previous to the amendment, the power rested in the body of the Senate.

The debate on the vote to remove the 4-1-1 phones on campus was another notable event at the meeting.

Following discussion about the phones located across campus at the previous House meeting, a motion was proposed to remove the phones and reallocate the funds to some other type of security measure on campus.

Debate arose due to the lack of clear alternatives after the removal of the phones, and the potential risks of needing the phones, but not having them. The major contention with keeping the 4-1-1 phones is the general lack of knowledge of their existence, misuse of the phones in previous years, and the high costs of maintenance.  Due to the lack of quorum, the discussion had to be tabled until the next meeting.

Other notable discussions during the meeting were the upcoming review of TSU’s Tobacco Policy, facilitated by Dr. Mark Shipman the Faculty Senate President, and an information presentation about the Summer 2014 Study Abroad trip to Scotland with assistant fine arts professor Chirs Ireland.