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Rep. Alma Adams, a Greensboro Democrat, is a woman who knows what she wants. And one of the things she has wanted for a long time (going on four sessions now by my count) is to give the student member of the UNC Board of Governors a vote.

A bill to do just that regularly passes the House but gets bogged down once it cross over to the Senate.

Today (Tuesday), Adams made a clever try at breaking the Senate logjam. While it cam up short, Adams did get to telegraph her displeasure to one of the Senate's top leaders.

You can find prior coverage of this topic here and here and here.

For those who don't want to click: the BOG has 30 members who can vote. The student member, usually the president of the UNC system's student body, sits on the board, can serve on committees but can't vote.

Despite an 82-33 vote for it in the House, the bill is parked in the Senate's Rules Committee, chaired by Sen. Tony Rand.

Simply put: Rand won't move the thing.

But Rand is trying to get the House to approve a bill related to when and where certain types of medical facilities can be opened.

Adams asked the House Health Committee to attach the student provision to Rand's bill, forcing him either to accept the student vote or at least open up a discussion on the issue.

For you technocrats who are about to send me blistering e-mails about whether the amendment was "germane" or not, let me simply say the issue wasn't fully discussed and ended up being moot. (If you understood this paragraph, seek professional help.)

The committee, at any rate, shot the amendment down.

After the meeting, Adams acknowledged she was giving a little bit of grief to one of the big dogs of the General Assembly.

"The rules chair has a lot of power, no doubt," Adams said. "But they ought to exert that power with sense of fairness."

As he left the committee today, Rand was unapologetic for blocking the bill.

"There are those who feel strongly that the Board of Governors is one of the highest areas of public service in the state that requires judgment, it requires life experience, it also requires a significant amount of time to understand what the Board of Governors is doing," Rand said. "One year in and out is not adequate to gain experience. The board is too large anyway."

Fair enough. Rand makes arguments that those opposed to have student vote have made for quite some time. But then I asked him, why not let it come up for debate and a vote. After all, the Senate version of the bill has more than 30 co-sponsors, more than enough to pass the bill should it ever get to the floor. (The Senate only has 50 members.)

"I don't know whether it does or not," Rand said. It does, I assured him.

"The Senate will look at it and discuss it and at this point I don't anticipate taking any action," Rand replied.

As for Adams, she said that if another opportunity to attach the student vote measure comes along this session, she will take it.