The Student Association Senate passed a resolution Monday that will allow senators to send surveys to the student body without full senate approval.

Senators voted 24-9-3 to pass the Survey Accessibility Act, which will amend SA bylaws to let senators send surveys to students after receiving senate committee approval instead of requiring a resolution passed by the full senate. The bill’s sponsor, SA Sen. Dan Saleem (CCAS-U), said the bill intends to make student surveying faster and more efficient by allowing committees to spearhead the proposals.

“This bylaw change would seek to make these surveys more accessible and more collaborative with the committee, as well as the assemblies, to put out to the student body to hear their voice,” Saleem said.

SA Sen. Ethan Fitzgerald (CCAS-U) said he voted against the bill because he was concerned the bill would lead to poorer-quality surveys and fewer responses from students who may be less likely to respond if they receive too many emails. He added that he is concerned because senators passed the bill by only one vote in the full senate meeting and the Governance and Nominations Committee passed the bill by only one vote in their meeting.

“If there’s a lower threshold to send out these surveys, there are going to be more surveys sent out,” Fitzgerald said. “There’s going to be a lot of spam and students already do not respond to these surveys.”

During public comment, there was continued disagreement among senators and attendees about the potential of senators of pushing the bill too quickly to the senate, forgoing the committee review process after amending it during the full session. Fitzgerald said senators made “drastic” changes to the legislation since committee members viewed it because of the amendment and that he would like senators to send the bill back to committee for further review.

“When we’re making such drastic changes to a piece of legislation, I would prefer to send it back to committee,” Fitzgerald said. “This was nothing like the bill in its original form. There was a number of changes that were complicated, and I’m worried a number of people online weren’t able to see the extent of these changes.”

In response, Saleem said the bill’s narrow vote shows that “every vote counts.”

Senators unanimously passed the Graduate Student Support Act, which amends SA bylaws to make it easier for graduate schools to form umbrella organizations under the SA that will govern and allocate funds separately, like the Student Bar Association. The act’s sponsor, SA Senate Chairperson Pro Tempore Amy Cowley (ESIA-G), said the act encourages more graduate student advocacy and engagement because students would be able to govern and allocate funds directly to their peers, rather than through the SA.

“This process will establish a streamlined approach for organizations, encouraging more graduate student advocacy and engagement, and encourage grad organizations to work together,” Cowley said.

The senate also unanimously approved the Seat Conversion Act, which converted a senate seat reserved for a member of the graduate division of the School of Nursing to a graduate student-at-large position. Cowley, who sponsored the bill, said the senate decided that expanding the seat’s eligibility would be the best option to fill the longterm vacancy, which she attributed to a lack of nursing school applicants.

“I’m proud to say that this will be the only seat converted to large and that is thanks to the well rounded effort of the Gov and Noms committee,” Cowley said.

Senators voted to confirm Saahil Qureshi Shaik and Camila Batres to fill School of Business graduate student senate vacancies.

Shaik said graduate students have “unleveraged potential” because they don’t take the time to get to know their classmates and pledged to work on student engagement and involvement as a senator. Batres said as an international student from Guatemala, she will advocate for a diverse group of graduate students and work to represent the voices of other international students.

Senators unanimously voted to confirm Kaitlyn Burkhardt, the executive nominee for co-chair of the Mental Health Assembly. Burkhardt said she will first work to address student’s lack of awareness of the University’s mental health resources. She added that she will expand advertising for GW Counseling and Psychological Services by putting QR codes around campus.

“GW has so many resources,” Burkhardt said. “Students just don’t know how to access it.”

Senior Cordelia Scales, the former executive chief of staff for SA President Christian Zidouemba, said during public comment that she believes the senate is in violation of three bylaws, including the bylaw that requires senators to post the agenda publicly on social media since the beginning of this year. She said the SA is also not in accordance with bylaws because they have not posted a full recording of the senate meetings since May, when the current administration took over.

SA Vice President Demetrius Apostolis said he has been continuing to work on expanding U-Pass to part-time graduate students. He said he met Seth Weinshel, the associate vice president of business services, to discuss the project and has been working with the Metro to make the plan a reality despite it being an “increasingly difficult” endeavor.

Senators will hold the next senate meeting Oct. 16 at 8 p.m. in the University Student Center Grand Ballroom.