The Judicial Council has ruled to revoke IAC's ASUC sponsorship. There is no discussion of whether the punishment is appropriate to the violation, though, so I hope they jump on the appeal.
I can guess wildly, but there's no precedent. I can't imagine the Senate could be prevented from reinstating them as a new group, though one could argue that they would have to be recognized as a first-year group.
Losing sponsorship means the ASUC doesn't let them use their money or space anymore, I guess.
isn't it time this ridiculous separation between getting ASUC funding and (gasp) taking a position on issues that the ASUC is concerned with was revoked? what if US presidential candidates only got public funding conditional on not taking any political positions? this makes no sense.
you didn't respond to my example: John McCain got public funding despite the fact the he took political positions as a presidential candidate. There was no expectation that he should abstain from taking political positions. So why should the IAC, Calserve or anyone else abstain from taking positions as a condition for accepting funding? what's the diference?
this is more akin to civil servants taking positions in elections, or using government resources (staplers say...no, really) to support a candidate, which the Hatch Act punishes pretty stringently
i'll grant there is a bit of a contradiction (why can't a government official use a taxpayer purchased stapler in support of mccain, while the mccain campaign is allowed to simply use taxpayer money to buy a stapler), the only explanation I have is that the government gets to decide how much, where and when it's resources are allowed to be used for elections. the allocation the government sets aside for election purposes is defined and regulated, whereas this is not set aside, defined nor regulated.
Should groups get to be politically active within the ASUC? It's a political call, and it probably makes sense to not let them throw their weight around more so than they already do. Think what would happen to our politics if corporate contributions were banned...
Political candidates get access to taxpayer money in a neutral manner. Every candidate has the same rules for that money. The correct analogue would be if the ASUC provided funding to ASUC candidates to use on their campaigns.
Student groups, on the other hand, receive funding to use as student groups, not as advocates in ASUC elections. If groups could take sides, they can become false or meaningless groups for the purpose of getting money to use on campaigns. Some parties would create more groups, and they get their funding through a discretionary political process in the Senate, which existing political parties control without having to maintain any form of neutrality. This is immensely different from a fixed handout option for each candidate.
I'm no fan of public financing either, but there's no comparison.
