The Student Senate Wednesday will vote on a bylaw change that would prohibit the senate from donating its funds to third parties.

The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. in the Arcola/Tuscola Room of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

Sponsored by senate member James Paton, the proposed change would prohibit the use of Student Government funds for donations to any person, activity, organization or academic department.

The vote on the proposal comes two weeks after the senate defeated a bill 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.

“I think there’s a gray area that needs to be addressed concerning the way money is spread around,” Paton said.

Senate member Marty Ruhaak said if the senate did donate to third parties, some students might have a problem with who received the Student Government funds, which come from student fees.

“Some people would not want their money to go to (certain) causes,” Ruhaak said.

Ruhaak alluded to recent events at the University of Wisconsin where a student is considering legal action against the university on the grounds that the school’s Student Government is biased in the way it distributes student fees to organizations.

Andrew Krueger, news editor of the University of Wisconsin’s Daily Cardinal, said the student, Scott Southworth, is claiming student representatives will necessarily have biased views against certain groups.

Eastern’s Student Government has not voted to donate any money to third parties so far this year, said Senate Speaker Adam Weyhaupt.

In other business, the senate also will be presented with a resolution that would recommend an additional question appear on all faculty evaluation forms about the effectiveness of the professor.

The resolution, sponsored by senate member Jessica Catto, would recommend that each department ask students if they agree with the statement “My instructor, overall, is the most effective I have encountered in my educational experience at Eastern Illinois University”.

Ruhaak said the resolution is a continuation of a recommendation unanimously passed by the senate earlier this month to put an additional standardized question on every department’s faculty evaluations.

Currently, each department has five standardized questions on their evaluations as well as additional questions written by each department.

Catto previously said ensuring a standardized question on every faculty evaluation would improve the assessment of the faculty’s performance.