The Illinois Student Senate discussed an appropriation request Wednesday night asking the senate for $3,992 to create a new Web site from scratch. Though the current site is not even a year old, it is riddled with technical problems such as links leading to nowhere and excessively long URL’s, said graduate student senator Bobby Gregg.

Daniel Nugent, graduate student senator and author of the appropriation, said his friend, a University employee and one of the University’s eight certified webmasters, will build an original site and be able to give a preview by next week. This site would also follow University guidelines for sponsored Web pages, which the current site does not follow. The large cost is to cover the software and server registration switch required for the webmaster to create the site, because he prefers to use Microsoft instead of the freeware program used to run the current site.

“He knows what he’s doing and he will do a good job,” Nugent said.

Jason Webber, graduate student senator and vice president external, said that if he could get a list of complaints before switching sites, the current webmaster may be able to fix them without spending money to switch programs. Some senators believed that the site should at least be functional for students to use regardless of other issues.

“If we have a Web site that can at least serve the students, then even if a picture is six inches too big, it doesn’t bother me,” said Steve Benario, senior in Engineering and student senator.

The request will be voted on at next week’s senate meeting.