The Graduate Student Senate may have illegally passed election legislation during its Sunday meeting, as The Daily reported in Tuesday’s page 1 story,“GSS meeting items not on agenda.”

All meetings of public bodies must provide notice to the public prior to voting on legislation and the Senate failed to post the items regarding the nomination of five new members to the spring election board and the establishment of polling sites for the election to the agenda, according to the Oklahoma Open Meetings Act.

The Senate did not realize the immediacy of the items until 7 p.m. and decided vote on them so it would meet deadlines set by the UOSA Code Annotated, GSS supervisor George Ahmadi said.

While we support the legislation and don’t think the passage of the two pieces was malicious, we do not think it’s all right that GSS skirted the law for convenience.

GSS could have rescheduled the meeting for Feb. 27 to give the public proper time to review the legislation on the agenda while still meeting the deadline set in the Code Annotated.

As students, we can sympathize with being rushed to meet deadlines, but taking shortcuts and avoiding the intent of the law is not OK.

All public bodies are required to follow the Open Meeting Act, and on Jan. 28, the Publications Board canceled its meeting after failing to post its meeting agenda. Yes, it inconvenienced board members, but the decision to cancel was made to ensure compliance with the law.

We understand that as students it’s hard to reorganize a meeting to fit everyone’s schedule, but taking the extra effort to follow the steps outlined in the Oklahoma Open Meeting Act would insure the intent of the law is upheld.