Tuesday, December 09, 2008
El Recall: Graduate Dinero
An issue that people should be talking about right now is how the Graduate Assembly fits in with all of this. In particular, how much of the cost of the recall election are they responsible for? The relevant parts of the current Memorandum of Understanding are:
For future academic years, the Graduate Assembly will pay either 12% of total election costs or a percentage of election costs equal to the percentage of voters in the Spring ASUC election who are registered graduate students, whichever of the two is greater.
Each year, the Graduate Assembly shall budget a sum sufficient to cover the base elections costs of the Graduate Assembly for that year based on the base election cost for the prior year. The Graduate Assembly shall be responsible for paying its share of the elections costs for an overall ASUC Election budget of up to $75,000.
If additional funding is required for ASUC Elections beyond $75,000, then a committee composed of the ASUC President, the GA President, the Chair of the GA Finance Committee, and the Chair of the ASUC Finance Committee shall convene. Any agreement coming out of these meetings shall pend approval of the ASUC Senate. No one has been particularly careful about actually obeying most of the MOU, and my opinion is that anyone who doesn't like a result can just ignore it, but let's pretend like people care.
First, what percentage of the costs is the GA responsible for? The maximum of 12% and the percentage of votes in the Spring election, according to the text, but which one? Last year's? The one coming up this Spring?
The ASUC budgeted $48,000 for the Elections Council. If that has to be doubled (for example), this will shoot the total above $75,000, which will require meetings to come to some kind of agreement. This is complicated (or perhaps simplified) in the political arena by the fact that the people who ran the petition were law students, and thus their ASUC fees went to the Graduate Assembly. It would be the kind of joke we've come to expect from the ASUC if the GA still managed to get undergraduates to pay more of the bill than they would under the base terms of the MOU.
Anyway, if you happen to be one of the folks named there in the MOU concerning these meetings, you ought to be working on that.
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