Letters to the Editor

First of all, thank you for your extensive and patient coverage of the ASUC proposal controversy. The enterainment and drama is much appreciated.

However, one important argument must be mentioned. The legal situation of Oren Gabriel this summer indicates to me that the ASUC presidency means about $22,000 to him. Is any student government position worth doubling the cost of tuition? What do we really value in life? Maybe this is a lesson to all of us.

Robin Simmons

UC Berkeley student

Oren Gabriel made a personal choice to hire a lawyer to represent him in a case that he brought against the very organization he wants to reimburse him. That choice has already cost the Students of the University several thousand dollars, since his legal action made it necessary that the ASUC hire lawyers to represent the Judiciary Council.

The Alameda County judge ruled that the case could not be heard because all the forms of recourse had not been exhausted inside the organization. This should have been obvious, that Gabriel's impending appeal had not been resolved! He, of all people, should have had that in mind, that before he goes and spends over $20,000, he should wait to finish the free process inside the ASUC that he had already started. And now, Mr. Gabriel is asking the ASUC to pay for his mistakes.

I urge all of you to end your support for this bill. I and my fellow students should not foot any more of the cost for Oren Gabriel’s bad decisions than we already have. When my Campus Accounts Receivables account gets charged for the compulsory ASUC fee, I want to see it go towards students, not Mr. Gabriel’s legal team.

Gregory Stevens

UC Berkeley student

Katlyn Carter’s Thursday article on the ASUC meeting (“Executives Address Legal Bill Concerns,” Oct. 19) did not mention an important visual: Watching four people talk about how they are each more than $5,000 in debt because the ASUC messed up. And in response, people saying, “Well, that’s politics!”

People are calling this a partisan issue. What sounds more political to you: reimbursing the executives for the expenses incurred while trying to regain their democratically elected positions, or refusing to do so even though our own ASUC Attorney Mark Himelstein strongly recommends doing so on both legal and historical grounds?

Of the six lawyers that reviewed the case, not one thought that disqualifying the candidates was legally justified. If the ASUC Executives had not dropped the case in Alameda County Superior Court, the ASUC would have been forced to settle the litigation. This settlement, by reasonable estimates, would have incurred costs much higher than the $23,000 sought by Student Action candidates, and would have come out of the Legal Defense Fund.

Instead, Oren Gabriel and the other executives, for the good of the Association, made a decision to drop the case and risk not being reimbursed. Let me repeat: If the Executives had continued their lawsuit, they would be guaranteed reimbursement by a court of law. Instead, they dropped the lawsuit, and in doing so, ultimately saved the ASUC tens of thousands of dollars.

The ASUC Judicial Council committed a disservice to Oren Gabriel, the other executives, and all of the students on our campus. As an ASUC official, I am admitting that the actions of the ASUC have failed to honor the rights of some of our members, and it’s time we fixed the wrongs that have occured.

I guarantee that if students understood SB 51, they would support it. Want more information? If you care about making informed decisions, coming to next Wednesday’s meeting might help you understand why a majority of your elected representatives are expressing their support for this resolution.

Donald Rizzo

ASUC senator

After reading two articles last week about how the ASUC President Oren Gabriel wanted to use UC Berkeley students’ money to pay off his debt (“Former Officials Question Bill’s Legitimacy,” Oct. 13; “Bill Seeks ASUC Funds for President’s Legal Fees,” Oct. 12) I was outraged. Later Daily Cal articles dealing with this issue only added to my opposition.

But, on Wednesday night while attending the ASUC Senate meeting, I realize that I had made a mistake. I made harsh judgments based on half-truths. The hour and thirty minutes where the ASUC President and three vice presidents answered questions from the ASUC Senators made me conclude that the executives are not to blame.

I realized that the student body, wasn’t seeking the right questions or being made fully aware of the situation. Everyone reads about President Oren Gabriel wanting to use ASUC money to pay off a debt, but no one heard the whole story. No one hears that the ASUC Senate was not in session when this event took place. No one hears that the person that filed the lawsuit to disqualify President Gabriel and three executive officers from office only filed the lawsuit after learning that President Gabriel and three executive officers won by a landslide.

Isn’t it necessary to hear the whole story before taking a position? Don’t you think that we should be looking at the source of the problem, rather than the consequence?

Phia Xiong

UC Berkeley Student

This week’s op-ed by ASUC President Oren Gabriel (“Righteousness, Not Mere Self Interest, Is At Stake,” Oct. 17) claimed to provided “all the relevant facts” regarding reimbursement in fact missed a few important ones.

Had Gabriel or any of his slate accepted responsibility for the original campaign violations they committed, the matter would have ended and Gabriel might have assumed the office for which a plurality of students selected him. With Gabriel unwilling to do this, the Student Action party chair, acting as Gabriel’s surrogate and on his behalf, lied to the Judicial Council.

How can Gabriel not accept some responsibility? At one point in all of this, Gabriel felt that the ASUC presidency was worth fighting and suing for—why have his feelings changed? Not even included among “all the relevant facts” Gabriel cites is that the case for which he accrued the major portion of his legal feels was thrown out of court.

This selective omission, like so many of Gabriel’s actions from the very beginning of this episode, betrays a fundamental lack of personal responsibility or respect for student government that I am amazed they come from the ASUC’s top executive.

The mental calisthenics needed to reconcile Gabriel’s sense of entitlement to a leadership position in an organization he seems to think so little of are beyond my abilities.

What I do understand is that as governments from the local to national level crumble into partisan game playing and outright self-entitlement, Gabriel appears happy to help lead the devolution and to do so from the helm of one of the most progressive and conscientious universities in the world.

You had all the right words to head Gabriel’s op-ed piece, Daily Cal. They just needed rearrangement to “Self-righteousness at stake.”

Blake Suttle

UC Berkeley Student

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