Thursday, February 22, 2007
Senate report
I have three things to report from the Senate. First is JRP revisions.
I'll only give you one example (the worst), but the way it worked was this.
Vishal bitched about some of the stuff requiring honesty. During the Senate meeting, Student Action senators moved to strike this stuff. They gave ridiculous explanations, and then struck it. Bobby wins, by the way, as Dimitri Garcia tried to strike the entire section on summary judgments.
Anyway, the example I'm going to give is as follows: The clause reads
Evidence that is shown to have been tampered with by the party attempting to submit it to the Council shall not be permitted and the party shall be subject to 4.17.3.6 of this document. Can you guess what the problem was?
Apparently, this was unfair, because people only had to "show" that it had been tampered with, not "prove" it. Seriously. That was the argument. It was then struck. David Wasserman was very vociferous about how stupid he thought that was, and he lit something on fire. (The two actions were not actually related, but it sounds better this way) Approximate quote:
That was retarded. No, sorry, I shouldn't say that because of folks who are mentally disabled. That was just stupid. The funniest thing is that the clauses they struck were clarifications of things the Judicial Council has already declared that it has the power to do under the old JRPs. Thus, the Judicial Council's powers aren't reduced at all, it's just more vague and more difficult for folks to know what they are.
By the way, folks objected to the oath that said "I understand that the Judicial Council can rule folks in contempt at any time for my being a lying asshole" or some such. This is especially funny because even if the oath is removed, the Judicial Council's powers still remain, so it just made it more difficult to ensure that folks understood the rules.
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