A bill before the Government of the Student Body senate could provide aid for pre-professional groups seeking funding from the Government of the Student Body.

GSB finance committee officials released their recommendations this month, including 10 zero-funded organizations, three of which were categorized as “pre-professional” groups. Such groups are unable to secure GSB funding, according to the organization’s bylaws.

Titled “Addressing the Curriculum and Pre-Professional Clause of the Bylaws,” the bill would allow for student organizations of a pre-professional nature to be funded if the senate and finance committee believe the groups “provide a benefit to the university and the students.”

Leia Guccione, engineering senator and the bill’s author, said the intent of the proposed amendment would be to deal with an issue which agriculture and engineering senators have seen many times.

“Historically, organizations which have engineers involved are subject to heavier scrutiny, as with agriculture students,” Guccione said. “Depending on how a senator of finance committee member interprets the bylaws, an individual could define whether or not an organization is curriculum or pre-professional.”

Because of the close connection between these groups and university departments, she said, there is a question as to whether the categorization of “pre-professional group” was appropriate.

“Essentially, we have this group of organizations which fall into a gray area,” Guccione said. “It always creates problems when we try to fund those organizations.”

By putting the decision of defining groups’ eligibility for funding in the hands of senators or finance committee members, she said, a compromise could be struck.

“We’ll never be able to fix this clause so that everyone is happy with it,” Guccione said. “This proposal makes fixing it unnecessary.”

The call for the bill, Guccione said, came from several incidents. funding bill for Engineers without Frontiers, asking the pre-professional bylaws be clarified. Guccione said she’d intended then to move forward with the amendment, but was delayed.

The recent finance committee recommendation to zero-fund Team PrISUm, which is partially funded by the College of Engineering, acted as a catalyst, she said.

However, some see the bill not as an agent of clarification, but rather a nuisance.

David Boike, GSB finance director, called the bill “misguided” and said, if adopted, could cause complications among finance proceedings.

“This bill takes a rule and says, ‘This rule shall be law unless we don’t feel like it,'” he said. “It’s going to make everything more complicated. How are we going to know what the senate feels like making exceptions for today?”

While GSB finance laws may need streamlining, Boike said, the proposed bill wouldn’t provide a solution.