The Undergraduate Council approved contentious bills recommending gender-neutral restrooms and a campus women’s center in a three-and-a-half hour meeting last night, which ended only when security guards evicted the council from the Sever Hall classroom where it meets.

The council also took the first step towards overhauling its constitution, starting a six-day voting period with near-unanimous support for revising the council’s non-discrimination policy and simplifying its committee structure.

The evening’s most heated debate concerned a resolution sponsored by council President Matthew W. Mahan ’05 and Andrew C. Stillman ’06 in support of gender-neutral bathrooms on campus. Jordan B. Woods ’06, political chair of the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Supporters Alliance (BGLTSA), spoke to the council in favor of the bill, which urges Harvard to remove male or female designations from all single-occupancy bathrooms.

Joseph R. Oliveri ’05 proposed striking from the resolution a clause that called for the College to explicitly grant transgender and gender-variant people the right to use any restroom they deem appropriate.

“The proponents of the bill have not been able to give a concrete definition of who is gender variant,” Oliveri said, adding that the new bill would allow anyone—himself included—to enter a women’s bathroom. “We’re reducing ourselves to the political arm of the BGLTSA.”

Russell M. Anello ’04 responded that the clause granted transgender people fundamental human rights without impeding on anyone else’s rights.

“It’s not as if there’s going to be a rush of Joe Oliveri’s running into the bathroom,” Anello said. “If somebody really is gender-variant the burden should be on the school to say they’re not.”

“I don’t think it’s the type of thing that people are going to take advantage of,” he added after the meeting.

Oliveri’s amendment failed by a vote of 23-7, and the resolution passed without amendment by a vote of 32-3.

Stillman and Laura C. Settlemyer ’05, who is also a Crimson editor, sponsored a resolution in support of creating a campus women’s center in Hilles Library, which faces substantial renovations by the College.

The resolution recommended that the council discuss a Radcliffe Union of Students position paper proposing the center.

P.K. Agarwalla ’04, who opposed the women’s center, proposed an amendment “to simultaneously create a men’s center.”

“I feel maybe the guys want a space to hang out on campus too,” Agarwalla said facetiously.

After the council voted not to consider Agarwalla’s amendment, Oliveri spoke against the bill as a whole.

“It’s both divisive and discriminatory. This hurts women,” Oliveri said. “As a council we should embrace inclusiveness, not exclusivity.”