Student Senate discussed Saturday's cancelation of PigTostal and the Office of Housing's decision to remove lofts from St. Edward's Hall at its meeting Wednesday.
Student body president Brett Rocheleau said police forces told him a neighbor alerted them that a party that was planned did not have a permit. He said people must request these permits at least 15 days in advance, so the students organizing PigTostal could not get one in time for the event.
"It was completely an isolated incident where basically the police force and the administration weren't looking to cancel this party," Rocheleau said. "They were working with it, they were expecting it to occur. So it's not going to keep coming up every weekend, these types of incidents."
Senate considered a resolution asking the Office of Housing to reconsider its decision to remove all lofts from St. Edward's Hall by the 2013-2014 academic year and replace them with modular furniture.
Sean Long, St. Edward's senator, said building the lofts is a First Year Orientation ritual for the residence hall.
Rocheleau said the Office of Housing considers the lofts a safety issue because they block the spots in the ceilings that release water in the case of a fire.
"By them knowing that this is occurring, they don't feel right letting it slide," he said.
The group passed the resolution after debate.
Senate passed a resolution requesting Auxiliary Operations to ask for student feedback about the Notre Dame ID card. It also passed resolutions asking for the creation of serve.nd.edu to centralize service opportunities and asking for revision of the Physical Education wellness program to initiate discussion about gender issues.
Senate passed a resolution amending the student government elections process.
The resolution stated, "For the purpose of petitions, the original signature of an undergraduate student shall be required to signify approval of the placement of a candidate or ticket on the ballot ... In the event that an election proceeds to a runoff, all tickets in the runoff may have a nominal increase in their funding equivalent to 20 percent of the funding initially allocated for the primary election."
Campus Ministry Liaison Ellen Carroll introduced a resolution requesting the University begin each home football game with a prayer. She said the football team would be a starting point, but the practice would ideally extend to other varsity sports.
"A lot of students who went to Catholic high schools, their sports games would start with a prayer," Carroll said. "People have been talking about what would it be like to start Notre Dame football games with the same kind of thing."
If the prayer were instated, the exact wording would be determined through collaboration between various University offices, such as the Office of Campus Ministry and the Office of the President, Carroll said.
Rocheleau said the resolution is not meant to impose religion on anyone, and the prayer would not profess belief in any specific faith.
"It just says bless the players so no one gets hurt, no one gets harm, there's fair play," he said. "So I hope no one would ever feel that we're imposing our religion on anyone ... And we would make sure the prayer focuses on being generalized for all religions."
Senate tabled the prayer resolution and will discuss it again at the next meeting.
Student body vice president Katie Rose reminded senators if someone feels a discriminatory incident was not handled correctly by his rector, he can report the incident to someone in a position of greater authority.
"If you do have a problem, if you think you weren't treated correctly or a matter wasn't treated correctly, you can go to the head of the rectors, who is [Associate Vice President for Residential Life] Heather Russell," she said.
