If there was any indication that the last Illinois Student Senate meeting before the holidays would be low-key, it wasn’t apparent once the group convened Wednesday night.

In addition to having multiple guest-speakers at the beginning of the evening, several resolutions were set to be voted on after the rest of the night’s business was conducted. One of the speakers was Dr. Marshall Poole, who represented a committee aimed at improving University parking.

“As you may know, the U of I is initiating a rate change in parking fees,” Poole said. “But what we’re trying to do is not just figure out a way to bring in more revenue, but also reconfigure the system so it’s more beneficial to everyone.”

Among some of the things that Poole and the committee received feedback on were ways of improving visitor, short-term, and event parking, as well as ways of looking at how the University could become more conducive to bike travel.

Additionally, members of the senate voiced concerns about new ways of enforcing parking restrictions and the amount of undergraduate input in the process. While there was disagreement on certain issues, one thing that Poole made apparent was how the parking department functions independently of other programs.

“The state has mandated that services such as this be self-supporting,” Poole said. “For example, if they build a parking garage that costs $25,000 a space, they have to make sure they can pay that off themselves.”

But while there was significant discussion on the parking issue, much of the conversation on the night came in light of a resolution about campus energy fees. The legislation, which was authored by senator Dan Weber, supports a program in which individual colleges and departments are billed relative to their past and projected energy consumption.

It is intended to provide incentives for colleges that spend less than their projected usage, but some senate members were concerned about the negative effects this would have in departments like Engineering.

The debate led to one amendment on the resolution, then an amendment on the proposed amendment, before it was decided that the resolution should be sent back to committee for further review by a vote of 10-7 with one abstention.