Tuesday night’s Undergraduate Senate meeting lacked the fireworks of last week’s meeting, which featured a leaked strategy email and ten consecutive roll call votes used as stalling tactics.

The senators entertained a presentation from Stanford Students for Choice and passed funding bills.

Meryl Holt ‘09 and Kate Benham ‘09, co-Presidents of Stanford Students for Choice, painted a grave picture of what will happen in June, when a federal bill will cause birth control prices to skyrocket at Vaden.

The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which closed a loophole that allowed for cheap birth control at university clinics, will cause the price increase.

“This hasn’t hit Stanford yet, but the stockpile held by Vaden will run out in June,” Holt said. “Stanford students are really going to feel it. For some women this is going to be an increase from $120 to $720 a year.”

Benham and Holt asked the Senate to support them in efforts to get the University to step in and subsidize birth control.

“We know that you guys don’t have the funding to actually remedy this problem, but we do think that you guys have a lot of symbolic value,” Behnam told the Senate. “If you guys could pass a resolution and help us start this dialogue, that would be a great help.”

Senator Luukas Ilves ‘09 estimated the cost of subsidizing birth control at $30,000.

Problems with the budgets for FanatAXE, along with the International Undergraduate Community and Students for Environmental Justice at Stanford, led the senators to delay deciding funding the three groups until next week’s meeting.

While the senators were initially enthusiastic about FanatAXE, following a brief presentation by the group’s leader, Zachary Warma ‘11, SSE Capital Group Director Chris Elmore ‘08 warned of potential financial problems.

Warma said that the group, which is asking for a $21,000 general fee transfer, will improve Big Game Week, try to draw more students to more sporting events and hopes to increase fan spirit.

But Elmore had harsh words for the group’s large, unstructured budget proposal.

“This bill doesn’t even tell us where to put the money,” Elmore said. “You can pass this bill, and beginning next year we’ll put lots of money into the account, and I’d be very surprised if the financial manager said you can’t spend any of this, it’s just super-sketchy.”

The hot tempers that prevailed at last week’s contentious meeting, in which Ilves faced off with Senate Chair Tiq Chapa ‘10 over Appropriations Committee appointments, had largely cooled over the last week.

When Elections Commissioner Ryan Woessner ‘10 referenced last week’s drama, he drew chuckles from the senators.

“Basically I threw everyone in a hat and drew,” said Woessner about selecting a senator to participate on the search committee for next year’s elections commissioner. “That was the process.”