Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Last week, etc....
Now, for the minutes from last week's meeting.
THINGS OF NOTE!!!!
Apparently, the ASUC Senate has lost its podium.
Van Nguyen gave his "State of the Association" speech. Talk about boring naming. We're supposed to be trailblazers here, and we've just gone and copied the "state of..." formulation from everyone else. Why not the "Association Awesomeness Assessment?"
The ASUC now has a faculty representative, chemical engineering professor Dennis Lieu.
Nad Permaul said a bunch of stuff about how the ASUC stores suck, and need to bring in more money. I want to remind folks that ASUC Senators get a 20% discount from at least part of the ASUC store. I'm waiting patiently for ASUC folks to show a little bit of principle and refuse to use that discount. It's easy for Senators to bitch to students about how they aren't patronizing ASUC stores, but when they go and take enormous discounts for themselves, somehow the complaints lose their punch. "What we need is for more people to buy from us. We, however, will not do so unless we get big discounts, because money for us is better than money for the ASUC."
One of the issues that Chancellor Bob 2.0 wants to focus on is giving money to illegal immigrants. But somehow, fee increases just keep on coming...
Says Graduate Assembly President Josh Daniels:
The GA will have free food and runs a good meeting. Actually, that food isn't free. It comes from the fees of graduate students. Now, sure, if you're an ASUC official who sees nothing wrong with stuffing your face on student fees, I guess it does seem "free." But a tiny bit of shame might be welcome.
Mr. Daniels said there was another issue with the Class Pass, which he hoped that either EVP Allbright or another ASUC Officer would raise to the Senate. When the Class Pass Referendum was approved three years ago, there was an expectation of services and service enhancements that the campus would get, and not a single one of them have been realized. So hopefully someone, if not him, will come to the Senate with specifics about that. He just wanted to give them an update on that. In essence, students were paying for a service they weren't getting. On principle, that was completely unacceptable. He hoped the Senate either asks their Officers about that or talks to him about it. Wow! Surprising! Not so much that nothing got done, but rather that this is coming from the fellow who pushed a fee referendum to give the university money without asking for anything in return, on the assumption that we'd get it eventually or some crap like that. This, of course, follows immediately after he noted that the Administration can't be trusted.
One thing that was done during appointments and scheduling was "recessing until the discretion of the Chair." This is something I have serious problems with, because it probably violates the public posting requirements. A person should be able to see the public posting, find out when meetings are, and then know when the meeting will reconvene if it recesses while she's there.
Taylor Allbright went heavy-handed in terms of committee appointments:
Mr. Osmeña asked would happen if the assignments on the board were not approved. Ms. Allbright said they would have to keep going until they find something they approve. If it failed, she would have to make nominations again. She'd make the same ones, and they'd continue forever. The Senate also violated the Constitution by combining the Intellectual Community and Educational Enhancement committees:
Back in session, Ms. Allbright said that VP Lee requested a motion to combine the Intellectual Community and Educational Enhancement Fund Committees. She would consider this a motion to suspend the rules and said they'd vote on them at the same time. Approval would require a two-thirds vote of those voting, since it was a vote to suspend the rules. Suspending the By-Laws is a main motion, and is thus subject to public posting requirements, and cannot be done in the same meeting that it's proposed. Suspending the rules is different, but since the nomination processes for both committees are defined in the By-Laws, they likely cannot be combined without a By-Law suspension. I know a number of Senators had a problem with this combination, and they should be aware that it was probably done in violation of the Constitution.
. . .
|
. . .
|
