Strategies that will help NIU break the reigns of the Board of Regents and find support for a proposal by State Sen. Patrick Welch, D-Peru, asking for a separate governing board for NIU were discussed during Tuesday’s Student Association’s Student Political Education and Action Committee meeting.

The committee plans to send letters in support of Welch’s proposal to “wishy_washy” senators.

SA President Paula Radtke said “Northern has outgrown the Board of Regents. If a lot of people get involved, it will send a strong message to the Regents that they need to clean up their act.”

SPEAC member John Martin said the committee will ask for letters of endorsement from the faculty and other government officials. The committee will organize a petition for NIU students to sign and send copies of the petition to the Illinois Senate and Illinois House of Representatives.

Martin said the bulk of the opposition against NIU receiving its own governing board is coming “from people who have an interest in the University of Illinois Champaign_Urbana.” People see the proposal as competition for U of I, he said.

The committee intends to send a package to gain support from senators who are undecided or against Welch’s proposal. “With this packet, we are going to show why the Board of Regents sucks,” Martin said.

Radtke said an amendment to the Regency Act is necessary for NIU’s separate governing board.

“If we get it through the Senate, we’ve got a pretty good shot,” she said.

Passage by the House of Representatives will not be as difficult because the proposal will be a smaller issue than it is in the Senate. “There is not as much of a vested interest in the House,” Radtke said.

However, SPEAC member Mark Brierton said it will be difficult to pass the proposal through the Senate. Senators will see the proposal as a “Pat Welch re_election bill.”

Brierton said the Senate’s discussion on voter redistricting in 1990 also will cause problems for the proposal’s passage.

Martin said he will contact Illinois Republican Party Chairman Al Jordan in an attempt to get Gov. James Thompson to endorse Welch’s proposal.

Gaining support for NIU’s own governing board will take time. “We need to wait until spring until we really push for this,” Radtke said.

The committee decided to wait until they receive a copy of Welch’s proposal before they plan strategies to create a student vote on the proposed governing board.