The votes are in, and the potential office hour bill has been voted down. The Senate branch of the Student Government Association voted down legislation that would require all Senators to hold one office hour per week at the March 13 meeting.

The bill was amended at the March 6 meeting to include senators, University Program Council delegates, Freshman Forum members and members of the judicial branch. The bill was then tabled to allow senators to get feedback from the other branches before taking a vote.

UPC delegates and Freshman Forum members informally voted down the bill.

Informal votes do not have weight in determining whether a bill will pass or fail, but they allow senators to gauge the opinions of the other branches.

The bill was amended again on the Senate floor March 13 to remove Freshman Forum, UPC and the judicial branch and require only senators to hold one office hour per week, beginning Fall 2014.

The intent of the original bill was to apply it only to senators, said Senator Adam McCollum, co-author of the bill.

“We just wanted senators to be held accountable to students and improve visibility on campus,” McCollum said. “I don’t think we should require the other branches to spend an hour in the office each week if they don’t agree with that.”

Freshman Forum member Mollie Schaefer thinks SGA members should spend more time interacting with students in order to achieve greater visibility on campus.

“We should be requiring people to actually get out there and talk to students,” Schaefer said. “I don’t know what good it is going to do to require (SGA members) to sit an the office when they should be talking to students in the GUC or something because most students aren’t going to just walk in the office to talk to us about what we’re working on.”