A new bill to fund the purchase of Colorado State University flags for family members of deceased students was brought to the floor of the Associated Students of CSU Senate at their session Wednesday night.

Speaker of the Senate Ben Amundson presented the bill that would allocate $1,000 to purchase a collection of CSU flags from the bookstore to send to families and loved ones of CSU students who pass away while enrolled. 

“Any time a student passes away on campus, we take that very seriously,” Amundson said while presenting his bill. “What we do in that situation is we write them a letter from the student body president and we also give them a CSU flag.”

The bill would fund flags to send to families of deceased students of both the Fort Collins campus and CSU Online, Amundson said. Amundson specified that the bill would not extend to CSU Pueblo students.

“Any time a student passes away on campus, we take that very seriously. What we do in that situation is we write them a letter from the student body president and we also give them a CSU flag.” Ben Amundson, ASCSU Speaker of the Senate

Although the tradition began some time ago, there has never been a clear source of funding, which Amundson wants to change. 

“It’s always just been a discussion for where that’s coming from,” he said. “If (Senate) could do this, it would be an awesome thing to do.”

The money would be pulled from the Senate Discretionary Fund and added to ASCSU’s Supplies Fund, where the money would be used to buy CSU flags from the CSU bookstore. The bookstore currently lists CSU flags at $39.99.

According to the bill, Senate is also running low on their supply of flags, necessitating the allocation of funding.

The bill was sent to committee for changes to be recommended before next week’s vote on the bill.

Three new officers ratified in fourth Senate session 

The Senate also ratified three officers into their new positions, two for the Board for Student Organization Funding (BSOF) and one as the new Deputy Chief Justice in ASCSU’s Judicial Branch.

BSOF works to allocate money from the student fees shared with ASCSU to registered student organizations for “educational and cultural programming and to administer relevant provisions of Article VIII of the ASCSU Constitution,” according to ASCSU’s website. The ASCSU Executive Branch nominated both officers for the position. 

The three ratified officers who were sworn in are Gaurav Harshe and Amundson for BSOF and Amelia Guglielmi as the Deputy Chief Justice.

Harshe was ratified 32-0-1 while Amundson and Guglielmi were unanimously ratified together on a slate, 33-0-0.

“Every student has paid into student fees, and I’m really passionate about saying ‘let’s treat everyone fairly,’” Amundson said to the body.  “We want to ensure that we’re treating them legally.”

Chief Justice Madison Taylor had only good things to say about Guglielmi, whom she nominated for the position. 

“What I really wanted was somebody with strong and compassionate leadership skills,” Taylor said. “I wanted somebody who could help me build this branch up.” 

A problem Taylor said she ran into at the beginning of this year was a lack of members for the Judicial Branch, having only filled out three of seven positions.

“It’s not easy to train the majority of our court,” she said. “I wanted somebody who I knew was qualified… and that’s what I saw in Amelia (Guglielmi).”

All three officers were sworn in after being ratified. New officers in the judicial and executive branches will be brought to the Senate for ratification next week.

Collegian Assistant News Editor Stuart Smith can be reached at news@collegian.com or on Twitter @stuartsmithnews