Talk of money and politics dominated last night’s Graduate Student Council (GSC) meeting, as members approved funding for seven student groups and met with ASSU Special Fees Commissioner Bernard Fraga, a junior, to discuss implementing new campaigning rules.

The GSC handled the funding requests — the most of any meeting this year — in rapid-fire succession, before members began squabbling over the overlap between two groups asking for money. Some representatives argued that the Chinese Campus Evangelical Fellowship and the Association of Chinese Students did not deserve separate funding, since their events would attract the same students.

But GSC Funding Sub-Committee Chair Adam Beberg said that he was told the two groups do not get along “as well as you might think” and that the separate requests were appropriate.

“We look at the two groups and we make a call,” Beberg said, when asked what the GSC’s formal policy for determining an overlap between groups. Ultimately, all funding requests were approved without dissent.

The GSC also discussed a new permanent campaigning rule presented by Fraga, who said he wants “to simplify the rules governing elections.” In particular, Fraga said the new rules will permanently close loopholes in current regulations and explicitly define campaigning regulations.

While most GSC members agreed that stricter campaigning rules were needed, some believed that it did not go far enough in one aspect — limiting The Stanford Daily from publishing editorials during the week before elections.

“There is a huge conflict of interest between The Daily and special fees,” Beberg said, claiming that The Daily was “deeply rooted in the special fees process” since it could not get money from the student government. Fraga said such a provision limiting Daily editorials could be a topic for discussion, but it was not added to the rule, which passed by a vote of 7-2.

Also at last night’s meeting, the GSC brainstormed how to raise the number of GSC candidates for the spring elections and met with Nominations Commission member Amanda Marshall to discuss how to improve relations between student representatives on various administrative committees and the GSC.