Updated at 12:33 a.m. CDT April 7

A bill to change bylaws concerning pre-professional groups passed at Wednesday’s Government of the Student Body meeting.

The vote passed 23-0-2, just meeting the quorum of the senate. Twenty-three senators had to vote in favor of the bill for it to pass because two-thirds of senators are needed to make a change to the bylaws.

The GSB rules committee discussed legislation Monday to remove several senators who had not been showing up to meetings. After sending the possible legislation out to the GSB senators, three of them resigned: Greg Risius, off-campus senator; Dorie Spitler, College of Veterinary Medicine senator; and Brett Zeller, off-campus senator, said Henry Alliger, speaker of the senate.

The pre-professional bill failed at first, after extensive debate, by a vote of 20-6-1. After other items of the agenda were debated, Ryan Doll, Towers Residence Association senator, moved to reconsider the legislation. The senate agreed and another session of debate began.

The new bylaw states that a pre-professional group must have a major aspect of it “focused on developing the skill, access, and experience necessary to attain a career, internship, scholarship and/or professional degree status.”

Additionally, the group must meet two of the following: “the group’s advisor, mission or intent of their activities, are interrelated with a particular academic department and/or occupational field.”

This is a change from the previous bylaw that tied the pre-professional determination to members of a group receiving academic credit, voting on one or more college councils or the group receiving funds from a department.

Jacob Larson, off-campus senator and author of the bill, said the bill was meant to clarify what a pre-professional group is in order to simplify the allocations process.

GSB does not fund pre-professional groups because the groups do not have a broad and tangible benefit, according to GSB bylaws.

Frederiksen Court senator Kyle Krause said this means a pre-professional group has many benefits for those in the group but has few implications or benefits for those not in the group. The main purpose of a pre-professional group is to help a student in achieving an internship or advancing their career.

The groups have opportunities to receive funding elsewhere.

“We don’t want to fund groups that should naturally seek funding from academic colleges and departments or pre-professional groups,” said Tony Borich, College of Design senator.

The debate about which groups should be considered pre-professional is brought up every year because the bylaws are very subjective, Larson said.

“The concern is these groups in the gray areas that we endlessly debate,” Borich said.

Steve Saltzman, president of the ISU Entrepreneur Club, spoke at the meeting because he said he thought his perspective could add to the debate. The Entrepreneur Club received extensive debate during the allocations process as senators tried to determine whether it was a pre-professional group.

Saltzman said clarifying the bylaws would help both senators and student organizations.

“It obviously would save groups a lot of time, knowing whether they fell into it or not,” he said.

Saltzman said he thought the bylaws needed to be clarified further because they left too much room for subjective judgments, which he said put GSB on a “slippery slope” in determining which groups to fund.

Andrew Brown, Interfraternity Council senator, said he did not think the bill clarified the bylaws because it still left open a lot of room for interpretation.

“As it stands, there’s more problems than I saw to begin with,” he said.

Larson said the bill would not be a “cure-all” but would be a start to making things easier for future senates and student organizations. He said the bylaws would have to continue to be further defined in the future.

Graduate College senator Jason Stanek originally voted against the bill.

“I think there are a lot of serious problems with the bill. I completely respect the intent of the authors,” he said. “I think it is completely too broad.”

Stanek motion to amend the legislation in the later debate was turned down with the time set aside for debate running down.

Next year’s senate has less experience than the current senate, and Larson said it was important for those that have been trying to clarify the bylaws to make a change now. Larson has been a senator for two years and was on the Finance Committee this year. He said the bill had the full support of the Finance Committee this year.

“It’s just frustrating,” he said. “It’s been a problem for four years, and this bill represents six months of work.”

Larson said he thought the bill would have passed if more senators had been present at the meeting.

“I don’t know where everybody is,” he said. “That is the question of the night.”

After much of debate, an amendment by Borich to change wording in a section from “correlate” to “inter-related.” The amendment passed.

GSB continually had problems with filling quorum throughout the latter parts of the meeting. During a five-minute recess to discuss certain wording of the legislation between small groups, senators were ordered to stay in the room. GSB cannot continue a meeting if it drops below quorum.