In the first meetings with a fully participating Student Council Friday and Sunday, members of the University of Wisconsin student government passed measures changing responses to intentional policy violations and allowing for more services to count as direct services.

Introduced Friday by Student Services Finance Committee Rep. Ellie Bruecker to Student Council, the first piece of legislation passed allows series of events to count as direct services in a student organization’s eligibility for segregated fee funding.

Bruecker, who is also running to be next year’s SSFC chair, said the legislation will allow SSFC to differentiate between different kinds of events, ensuring events that meet direct service requirements that are requestable, tailorable and educational to the entire student body to be funded.

She also said it could potentially allow more groups to become GSSF groups, adding she plans to reach out to student organizations in an effort to inform them if they would be eligible for additional funding.

“I understand that direct services criteria are complicated,” Bruecker said. “And I think that a lot of members on SSFC are really committed to getting rid of the idea that SSFC is an … evil committee that doesn’t want to give anyone money. I am above and beyond committed to giving groups as much help as they need to understand this.”

Bruecker also said the change would be beneficial to the majority of groups who receive General Student Services Funds and would help the groups to better serve students on campus.

In a meeting Sunday, past SSFC Chair and current Student Council Rep. Sarah Neibart said the change allowed for services that do not cater to all students on campus to receive direct services funding, which requires the need to be tailorable towards all UW students.

The second piece of legislation approved by Student Council allows for differentiation between individual and group intentional policy violations, while creating a process for responding to accusations of intentionality behind policy violations.

“This creates a more proactive way of handling violations,” Bruecker said. “It’s really important to have a measure of how can this not happen again going forward.”

Bruecker said the change allows a group or an individual accused of an intentional policy violation to have a hearing in front of SSFC, where the individual or the group can speak for 10 minutes on their own behalf, followed by 30 minutes of questions by SSFC. The legislation also differentiates punishments for individual versus group policy violations.

However, Neibart moved to amend this hearing process Sunday, saying while this was an important step for SSFC as some have criticized the current bylaws as “draconian,” the organization should not distinguish between a group and an individual.

“How do you separate a member from the rest of the group? How can you not say that this was in the same spirit as the rest of the group,” Neibart said. “Individuals make up the group, and there’s no point at which you can distinguish between an individual versus group member.”

Neibart also said she will be resigning as a Student Council representative in order to serve as chief of staff. She was also nominated and approved to serve on next session’s Student Transportation Board.