As deadlines near, the Graduate Student Council (GSC) continued to deliberate election issues at its meeting last night, in addition to passing several bills and clearing up a mistake made last week.

During the Feb. 21 meeting, the GSC voted 7-4 to add the Stanford News Readership Program to this spring’s special fees ballot. The GSC thought last week that the 64 percent vote in favor did not meet the two-thirds approval needed to pass.

After the meeting, however, electrical engineering graduate student and GSC co-Chair Paul Gurney consulted the ASSU Constitution and found a a technical discrepancy.

“The necessary approval for special fees to go on the ballot is three-fifths (not two-thirds as [we] thought last night),” he wrote in an email to GSC members the next day.

At the beginning of last night’s meeting, the GSC corrected its mistake, retroactively approving the program — which distributes The New York Times and The San Jose Mercury News across campus for free — for the spring ballot.

“There was a mistake in our records,” GSC co-Chair Jenny Allen J.D. ‘07 said. “The group does not need to petition.”

There were no comments or questions on the matter from the eight GSC members present.

The GSC discussed another pressing elections issue closer to home: filling its own seats. According to ASSU Elections Commissioner Bernard Fraga ‘08, only four graduate students have declared their intentions to run for seats in the 15-member body. By comparison, there are already 50 candidates for the Undergraduate Senate.

“I’m personally discouraged, but I’m not going to give up,” Allen said.

GSC members said they have been talking to other students in their departments and lab groups and are also sending emails out to lists to encourage students to run .

But only a small number of current members indicated last night that they were planning on running for reelection this spring.

The deadline for students to declare their candidacy is Mar. 5, though that deadline has been extended in the past for the GSC.

On a separate matter, the GSC also unanimously passed a bill modifying the permanent elections policy they had originally approved on Jan. 25. According to Fraga, the new bill aims to fix sections in the original resolution that “can be interpreted to limit free speech.” A case regarding the matter is currently being heard by the Constitutional Council.

After weeks of deliberation, the Council also unanimously passed the Sweatshop-Free Stanford Bill. The resolution encourages the University to adopt measures to ensure that University apparel is not manufactured in sweatshop conditions.

While the bill that was approved last night was modified slightly from an earlier draft, it did not incorporate the suggestion made in previous GSC meetings that apparel sold at ASSU-run stores, such as The Stanford Store in Tresidder Union, should also be required to satisfy the same standards the resolution asks of the University.

The GSC also met with officers from the Stanford Police Department, spending much of this time discussing ways to increase bicycle safety and educate bikers about appropriate traffic laws.

In light of recent events, the officers also touched on the topic of mental health, answering concerns about the availability of information on student suicides and speaking about some patterns in mental health they see in their roles as law enforcement officers.

“There are certain patterns among students who commit suicide,” said deputy Stephanie Taylor, who was a psychology professor before joining the Stanford Police Department. “And we see some of the highest numbers among Asian women.”