The ASSU Undergraduate Senate last night passed four bills designed to alleviate the shortage of money created by this year’s record number of special-fees refund requests. The bills, drafted by the ad hoc Review of Special Fees Committee, addressed both the short-term funds crisis and the long-term financial stability of Stanford’s student groups, which rely on special fees to subsidize their programs.

Pending approval by the Graduate Student Council at its meeting tonight, the bills will go into effect immediately.

To solve this year’s approaching shortage, the legislation will use the ASSU’s buffer fund to cover actual special-fees refunds for up to 16 percent of groups’ quarterly operating budgets. After that point, the ASSU will take the money from groups’ reserve accounts, but the buffer fund will cover refund-incurred charges once groups’ reserves are exhausted. At the end of the fiscal year, money left in groups’ operating budgets will go back into the buffer fund in the amount of any outstanding refund charge above 16 percent.

The ASSU will also bolster its buffer fund by liquidating the reserves of six groups that have been inactive for at least two years.

Some of the student groups at the meeting voiced concerns that if the special-fees program was to crash, they would be left without the extra security that the reserve accounts provide.

“It’s not fair, but it’s the best course of action,” said Senate Chair Josh Shipp, a junior. “We urge groups to continue to be prudent in their budgeting.”

He emphasized that the first bill addressing the immediate crisis was only a short-term solution.

The other bills in new legislation included provisions that the senators said will hopefully ensure the long-term viability of special fees, including one bill dealing specifically with student refunds.

Under this bill, students will no longer receive refunds in the form of a mailed check. Instead, the money will be credited toward their University bill. The senators said this change should prevent students from viewing refund money as “free cash.”

Students will also be asked to complete a confidential survey when they request a refund so that the ASSU can better understand why refund rates have increased so much recently.

According to ASSU Financial Manager Kyle Alisharan, Class of ’03, the true purpose of the refunds is to allow students to express disapproval of student groups they believe are misusing their budgets or to express ideological opposition to a group.

Still, representatives of student groups at the meeting said that more should be done to prevent abuse of the refund system.

Junior Eric Shih, chair of the Asian American Students Association, expressed concern that the reform bills may still allow refunds to undermine the voter-approved purpose of the special fees.

“I want to believe that students don’t want to hurt student groups, but I don’t want to bank on that,” Shih said. “That’s not good legislation.”

Other legislation dealt more directly with the student groups. In future years, the groups will be required to cover any refund amounts in excess of a predetermined Refund Cost Surcharge set by the ASSU. In the event of an excess, money will be collected from reserve accounts, operating budgets and, in extreme cases, through the repossession of other, previously agreed-upon assets.

“If you can’t cover the refund, all money is fair game,” Alisharan said.

The Senate is also seeking to reform the process by which a student group applies to be put on the special-fees ballot. Some of the new provisions will result in closer scrutiny by the ASSU and added steps to the application process.

Orges Beqiri, the financial manager of KZSU, said the application process was difficult enough already.

With the addition of the new legislation, he said, “It’s like jumping through hoops of fire and landing on a bed of nails.”

The special-fees system was not the only controversial issue up for debate at last night’s meeting. The Senate also passed two advocacy bills.

One of the bills recommended changes to the non-discrimination policy currently used by the Career Development Center (CDC). The Senate requested that the CDC no longer make its services available to employers that practice lawful discrimination, such as the U.S. military, which discriminates based on sexual orientation.

The other advocacy bill was a statement of opposition to California Senate Bill 193, which could pose major problems to Pacific-10 athletics programs.

Nonetheless, most of the meeting was spent debating the special-fees bills.

“This is not a crisis, but it is a very serious situation,” said ASSU President Nadiya Figueroa, a senior.

— Eric Eldon contributed to this article.