A week after a controversial vote by the Student Senate about allocating money to the Miss Black EIU pageant, senate members were presented Wednesday with a proposed bylaw change that would prevent Student Government funds from being donated to third parties.

Sponsored by senate member James Paton, the bylaw change proposal states that no Student Government funds should be used for donations to any person, activity, organization or academic department.

The legislation comes a week after the senate voted down a motion that would have allocated $100 toward a Student Government advertisement in the Miss Black EIU pageant program. Several senate members claimed the allocation was comparable to a donation, and, if they approved the motion, others would start to solicit the senate for money.

Cox said while the bylaw change isn’t a direct result of last week’s vote, the controversy may have prompted the legislation.

The controversy did lead several senate members to request that Paton’s bylaw change specify exactly what constituted a “donation.”

Cox disagreed that a specific definition was needed.

“It’s a good idea to stay somewhat vague,” Cox said. “We can’t see into the future.”

Speaker of the Senate Adam Weyhaupt said the debate was “a wording thing,” and said that “we’ll work this out sometime next week.”

In addition, the bylaw change would also set rules for preparing the senate’s budget.

If approved, the bylaw change would mandate the Student Body President and the Speaker of the Senate be in charge of preparing the senate’s annual budget. The two would then have to submit the budget to the senate for approval.

Weyhaupt said that although the budget is currently prepared in this way, the system is not mentioned in the senate’s bylaws.

Senate member Yve Williams supported requiring the senate to approve its budget each year.

“This addresses the actual problem,” Williams said. “The reason we had (the problem last week) is that the budget never came to senate.”