During its weekly Monday night meeting this week, the University of Massachusetts Student Government Association Senate discussed aspects of what could be a potential new student union building on campus, in addition to making several internal Senate appointments.

SGA Secretary of Finance Ben Johnson gave a PowerPoint presentation to the Senate on the information surrounding a potential new building. Johnson discussed few specifics for a potential plan, but explained that next semester he would bring the Senate a proposal – and noted that he was only holding an information session at Monday’s meeting.

The current Student Union was built in 1957 for $2 million when the total student population was 4,791, he noted. With an estimated 25,957 students at UMass in 2010, Johnson said that he feels a new Student Union is overdue.

“This was [built] a long time ago … there have been no major renovations for the past 50 years, which is crazy,” said Johnson.

Aside from the current building being old, Johnson said that the Student Union is currently not up to Massachusetts state code for an assembly building. It would cost $30 million, he said, just to get the building up to code.

The discussed plans suggest a $50 million new building – which is based off the cost of student unions at schools with similarly sized student populations – to be paid half by students and half by donors. If actually constructed, the building, he noted, could add a new $125 fee per student per semester for the next 25 years.

However, the ideas for a new building are still in a planning phase and any proposed fee would have to be passed in a referendum by the student body before anything is put into action.

Elsewhere at Monday night’s meeting, new senators were appointed to posts and members were appointed to a new Senate committee.

Willis Chen, a freshman Southwest south senator who was sworn in at a Senate meeting last week, was appointed to the State and Federal Organizing Committee.

Darlene Vu, a sophomore public health major and People’s Market employee who was appointed to a vacant Northeast Residential Area Senate seat two weeks ago, was appointed to the Senate’s Finance Committee.

And Sens. Gabrielle Cook, Savannah Van Leuvan-Smith, Sean O’Connor, Renee Barouxis and John Kyle Jessey were appointed to the newly created UMass Day Select Committee. The UMass Day Select Committee was created by the Senate after O’Connor, the State and Federal Committee chairman, asked for the creation of a committee to create a day where UMass hosts local and state legislators on campus.

The Senate also voted at Monday’s meeting to not add a motion to the agenda which would have called for SGA President Yevin Roh to discuss the SGA’s recent motion proposing an alternative to the Faculty Senate-passed “A Tobacco-Free UMass Amherst” plan – which would ban all tobacco products on campus beginning July 1, 2013 – at a meeting of the Tobacco-Free UMass Committee which he belongs to.

Sam Hayes can be reached at [email protected].