ASUC President Connor Landgraf has muddled the proper process of this year’s election.
Because he tardily submitted bills to the ASUC Senate to put two referendums before student voters, the senate could not consider the measures until after its constitutional deadline to finalize the election ballot. Accordingly, Landgraf issued executive orders over spring break to ensure that students can vote on the Class Pass Referendum, which will extend the student bus pass, and the Fitness and Wellness Referendum, which would levy a fee to provide for the construction of a new “wellness center,” among other things.
Landgraf should have known better. The Class Pass would certainly be on the ballot no matter what because the pass expires this year, so students need to decide whether they will keep it. However, the fitness referendum’s pertinence to this election is a little less clear. Had Landgraf provided the senate with more time to debate the merits of voting on the fee, it may not have made it to the ballot at all. Landgraf should have known roughly when the filing deadline would be and planned accordingly.
ASUC officials should also question whether Landgraf’s orders are legitimate. According to the ASUC Constitution, executive orders can only be issued for actions that are “urgent and necessary to maintain the functioning of the ASUC until the Senate can again meet.”
The Class Pass arguably meets these standards. One could easily construe the language to make the case that the pass’s expiration — set to occur this fall — renders it “urgent and necessary” to keep the ASUC functioning in a certain sense, and the senate technically couldn’t meet to reconsider its ballot placement until next year. But the justification for the fitness fee is not nearly as sound. Landgraf’s missed deadline is unfortunate, but why couldn’t the fee wait until next year? The fitness fee appears to be an inappropriate use of the executive order.
In his order for the fitness fee, Landgraf seems to derive urgency from claims that current campus fitness and wellness facilities are “significantly overcrowded and do not have enough capacity for students.” He also cites student requests for more facilities. Yet these are hardly needed to keep the ASUC functioning, as the constitution requires for executive orders.
Furthermore, raising concerns over Landgraf’s orders inevitably harkens back to similar questions the Judicial Council considered last year, when it overturned then-ASUC president Vishalli Loomba’s executive order invalidating the V.O.I.C.E. initiative — through which students pay $2 per semester to support The Daily Californian. The “functioning of the ASUC” requirement can be interpreted broadly and is somewhat ambiguous, the council wrote, but that “does not serve as a blank cheque for executive authority and jurisdiction.”
Beyond their merits, these orders open the door for even more objectionable actions in the future. An ASUC president should not have unrestricted authority to put any referendum on the ballot. And the Judicial Council should have the opportunity to review Landgraf’s actions and give further clarity to the process of issuing executive orders.