To what ends will we allow the ASUC to pick and choose what parts of their constitution they adhere to?

With the 1,000 signatures necessary to obtain a recall vote on independent ASUC Senator John Moghtader, ASUC Attorney General Michael Sinanian discovered a technicality that allowed the senate to push the discussion of the recall to the next senate meeting, thus setting the election to January.

We as a student body cannot allow the ASUC to protect John Moghtader behind trivialities and loopholes. In putting off the recall election until next year, the senate is postponing what is a pressing issue. John Moghtader has been implicated in what is essentially a hate crime. Whether or not the police and university choose to press charges is secondary because the student body governs this school. The student body chooses its senators, not the UCPD. We vote for our representatives, and we have voted to remove one of them from power.

Other ASUC senators like Tu Tran and Eddie Nahabet have claimed that they worry about dividing the campus and the senate. To these senators I ask, what is more divided than a senate that routinely holds meeting that last for twelve hours? How can you claim that removing a senator who does not belong to a party, because he and his former party SQUELCH! "parted ways," will divide the senate? John Moghtader does not hold the same principles as the rest of the senate; his reaction to the more than 1,000 students who have signed the petition to recall him is an unsubstantiated claim that these students only want to remove him from office because of his political views.

I signed the petition to remove the senator from office because of the way he represents himself, not because of whom he represents. A senator who routinely disrupts student activities, yells profanities at visiting lecturers, and (allegedly) assaults peaceful protestors has no place representing students on a campus like UC Berkeley.

Michael Sinanian claims that the recall election could cost as much as $50,000. If this is true, and the ASUC performs its duty in holding a recall election, then John Moghtader needs to choose whether his seat on the senate is worth that cost to the student body. The same student body that has already accrued over 1,000 signatures calling for his removal from the senate.

I call on you, John Moghtader, to make the right decision. You admit that the recall election will happen, you claimed you would receive just as many votes as you did last spring, but at what cost? Is your seat in the Senate worth $50,000 to the student body? Do the right thing John, for once.