For the first time during his presidency, Government of the Student Body President Mike Banasiak vetoed a bill passed by the GSB senate.

Banasiak vetoed a funding bill that was approved by the senate two weeks ago. The bill, which would have authorized funding to the new student group Engineers Without Frontiers, will go back to the senate for it to vote on whether the veto should be overridden.

GSB bylaws state a two-thirds vote of seated senators is needed to override the veto, or 25 votes.

Engineers Without Frontiers (EWF-USA) was founded “so engineers and community members can work together to identify and solve technology-based problems, employing solutions that can be locally sustained, leading to an improved quality of life.”

The senate passed the bill to fund the group at its Nov. 12 meeting by a vote of 21-14-1. However, there was much debate over the group.

The Finance Committee had approved the group for funding after the group’s finance hearing during the Special Allocations process. Yet, the senate decided to divide the group out from other groups that requested Special Allocations funding because of senators’ concerns about whether the group should be categorized as a preprofessional organization.

The senate took three weeks to debate funding the group, as it postponed a vote on the bill at one of its meetings to allow the GSB Finance Committee to review the bill.

In a close vote, the committee upheld its original decision and sent a favorable recommendation for funding the group to the senate, who passed the bill.

Ryan Legg, president of the group and junior in civil engineering, said the group plans to work with the senate to override the veto.

“We’ve proven we’re not a pre-professional group twice, I think we can do it again,” Legg said.

Banasiak said two reasons led him to veto the group’s funding, including the presence of several discrepancies between the testimony the group gave at its finance hearing and before the senate.

GSB Finance Director David Boike said the group’s answers did seem to change from the finance committee hearing to the senate meeting. He said senators and Banasiak have had problems with deciding whether to fund the group because there was seemingly contradictory information group members were giving.

“It makes it hard to make a decision when the group’s answers to questions about being a preprofessional group were ‘Yeah, well … no. I mean, kind of,'” Boike said.

Legg said there weren’t discrepancies in the group’s testimony, just a misunderstanding between GSB and the group as to wether members could receive academic credit. He said members would not receive senior design credit for participating in the group’s projects which are outside of their design classes.

“The work would be totally separate,” Legg said

Banasiak said the second reason was GSB bylaws need to be changed or clarified to give a clear definition of what makes a preprofessional group.

The bylaws list preprofessional groups as those that meet any or all of the following criteria:

* Receives academic credit for membership

* Votes as a member of one or more college councils

* Is sponsored or received funding from one or more college councils or academic departments

* Is comprised primarily of students who are members of a particular academic department

* Primarily helps students obtain professional degrees, internships or scholarships

* Is affiliated with a professional organization

Yet, despite the bylaws classification on preprofessional groups, Banasiak said the bylaws are still unclear.

He said it is unclear who can be included as a member of the group, if only engineers would be able to join. It is also unclear whether engineers could use the group for academic credit or would further a particular academic pursuit and whether the group is a part of or could receive funding from the Engineering College’s academic counsel, he said.

“It was a very confusing hearing, because it’s not your typical mold of a preprofessional group, but it still has enough aspects about it make it seem to fit with other groups that have been categorized as preprofessional,” Boike said. “It’s a pretty blatant preprofessional group.”

Legg said the group is not pre-professional.

“We are primarily composed of engineers, but that’s a college and not a department,” he said. “We don’t violate the bylaws. No one gets credit, we don’t get money from a college council and any student can participate in the design of any structure if they want to,” he said.

Legg said engineering affects all aspects of life, and the group is only meant to educate students about the effects.

Banasiak said he is not vetoing funding for the group because he believes they are a preprofessional organization, but because of the underlying problem the bylaws cause in situations with groups such as this one.

“There has been a lot of debate over how to interpret in our bylaws what a preprofessional group is, and that is the bigger problem that needs to be brought to the surface,” he said. “We need to clear this up in our bylaws in order to give the group a fair chance of getting funding, as well as set a precedent for future groups that come for funding.