Gary Golka, a junior in computer science and math education, has made plenty of friends on his residence hall floor.

A decision Tuesday night finalized any questions of loyalty he might have had.

Earlier this month, Government of the Student Body President Adam Gold vetoed a Senate-passed bill to pay airline tickets for Golka’s Educational Computing Club (TECC). Group members hope to make a presentation in Orlando, Fla., on April 1-5.

Gold vetoed the bill because he said the money could be better spent.

“I don’t think there’s any reason at all that students’ money should be used to send people to Disney World,” Gold said.

But Golka said that was never the intention.

“We never said we were going to use the money to go to Disney World. We want to keep things on a professional level,” he said.

After Gold’s veto, Golka said club members had no idea where they were going to get enough money to fly to Florida.

Here’s where the residence hall stepped in.

The 60 members of Emerson House, where Golka lives on the eighth floor of Larch Hall, voted unanimously to donate about $235 from their floor’s budget to pay for the plane ticket.

“I think it is great. It helps me out a lot with the funding because before we didn’t know where we were going to get the money from,” Golka said.

Grif Sims, a junior in ceramic engineering and Emerson House president, said, “GSB had an opportunity to help the university and they let it slip through their fingers. It is obvious that Mr. Gold cares more about politics than helping students at Iowa State.”

“Our floor picked up the responsibility where GSB left off,” said Jeff Mallinger, a sophomore in computer engineering.

TECC members will attend the Society for Information and Teacher Education (SITE) Conference. Golka said they plan to discuss the club and the ISU College of Education with professors from all over the world at the conference.