A bill originally intended to clear up the definition of what constitutes a pre-professional group has been questioned by some Government of the Student Body officials.

But after the bill’s defeat, some GSB officials say the intent of the bill’s authors and supporters was not to clarify bylaws, but rather to provide a loophole to fund Team PrISUm — a zero-funded pre-professional group with ties to the College of Engineering.

According to current GSB bylaws, curriculum and pre-professional groups — groups aligned with an academic department, college or college council — cannot be funded by GSB.

The bill was intended to allow funding exceptions to the pre-professional clause on a case-by-case basis.

On Tuesday, a group including members from various areas of the senate, as well as the bill’s author, College of Engineering senator Leia Guccione, worked out a lengthy amendment to the bill, which some GSB Finance Committee members said would have allowed funding for pre-professional groups depending on the interpretations of the senate or finance committee.

An additional amendment added to the bill by GSB off-campus senator Casey Harvey would have made funding illegal for groups sponsored not only by academic departments — as in the original amendment — but also by colleges and college councils. After the amendment, the bill’s authors turned against it.

“Basically, with Sen. Harvey’s amendment, no group that receives funding from academic departments, colleges or college councils, even if it’s just money for something like staplers, can receive funding from GSB,” said Sara Walter, GSB College of Engineering senator and sponsor of the bill. “We felt that the amendment would have just caused greater confusion.”

Walter said the intent of the bill was to decrease the confusion the regular allocations process had spurred this year. Groups that found themselves in gray areas because of associations with specific colleges or departments were shocked to discover they were branded pre-professional, and were denied funding after many had been funded in previous years, she said.

“The intent of the bill was not to get funding for just engineering clubs in general,” Walter said. “It was to clarify the pre-professional bylaws, to better define them so that groups like PrISUm … have a better idea of finance committee laws.”

Harvey said he disagreed.

“[Guccione’s] point was never to clear up any confusion, but to help her engineering groups get funded,” Harvey said. “We could have cleared up a lot of confusion for next year, cleared up the gray area, but instead of that, some senators chose to support pet projects, rather than help the student body as a whole.”

Guccione denied Harvey’s accusations, saying the bill failed for a number of reasons, including concerns the issue was being rushed through and the bill was attempting to change too many things at once.

She said the proposed bylaw change had not been completely motivated by PrISUm’s plight.

“The bylaw change … is not solely related to it,” Guccione said. “The senate has had problems with this every year, and after seeing enough inaction on the part of the senate, I decided I needed to be the catalyst to get something done.”

Some in the senate question whether the pre-professional laws needed clarifying at all. Tony Luken, GSB speaker of the senate, said he felt the current bylaws worked fine, and questioned some senator’s motives for backing the bill.

“GSB funds a well-rounded education. If it’s something to do with a college or a department, students already have a way they pay for that. It’s called tuition,” Luken said. “It ain’t broke, but they’re trying to fix it anyway.”

Luken said the reasons behind the bill’s introduction represented a conflict of fairness for senators.

“There were some groups that saw some of their core constituents being hit harder by the budget cuts, and they wanted to try to re-write the rules to benefit their constituency,” he said. “I think that the rules should apply to all the groups instead of holding a group’s request until the end and then changing the rules for them.”