CalSERVE Senator Sevly Snguon authored the bill, SB 17, in response to a Sept. 17 printing of an advertisement in the Daily Cal for Dr. Chase Lay, a Bay Area cosmetic surgeon, that emphasized Lay’s expertise in “Asian eyelid surgery” and “Asian facial plastics.” The ad also included photos of Asian women who had undergone eyelid surgery.

The bill was originally introduced Sept. 25 but was tabled until this week. If it is passed, the Daily Cal will be urged to publish an apology for the advertisement online and in print. ASUC President DeeJay Pepito would also be asked to create a task force to investigate campus climate for students of Asian or Pacific Islander descent.

Snguon said at the senate’s external committee meeting Monday that the advertisement was “defining forms of beauty.”

UC Berkeley is a “community where we should feel comfortable,” he said. ”We’re not here to define what people should look like.”

At the committee meeting, Sarah Burns, the Daily Cal’s editor in chief and president, explained the newspaper’s process of screening potentially controversial advertisements. The Daily Cal’s Senior Editorial Board can review such advertisements prior to publication and determine whether to publish them. Although this particular advertisement was not reviewed before publication, the board decided not to let it print again after receiving criticism from the campus community, Burns said.

“We decided to pull the ad because we were cutting off a portion of our readership,” she said.

Lay said he understood why it was pulled but that he did not intend to offend the community.

“I just thought I’d put my expertise on display in areas where the demand was high,” Lay said in an interview shortly after the bill’s initial introduction. “It was not a chance to take advantage of a demographic or patients that are insecure about themselves.”

The external committee approved SB 17 unanimously Monday, allowing the bill to be considered by the entire senate Wednesday.

Jennie Yoon is the lead student government reporter. Contact her at jyoon@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @jennieyoon_.

The post ASUC Senate bill asks Daily Cal to apologize for advertisement appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Michael Gethers/File

The ASUC Senate unanimously passed a bill last Wednesday in opposition to the Food and Drug Administration’s lifetime ban on blood donations from gay men.

The bill, SB 14, garnered full support from senators. Additionally, 16 out of the senate’s 20 members co-sponsored the bill.

Government officials on the national level, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and a number of openly gay and lesbian members of Congress, have also denounced the ban, calling it discriminatory and outdated.

Authored by CalSERVE Senator Caitlin Quinn, the bill calls on ASUC President Deejay Pepito to write a letter to President Barack Obama as well as to Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Barbara Lee expressing the ASUC’s concerns about the FDA’s lifetime ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men.

“After talking to some community members, I figured as the queer-endorsed Senator I should take a stand against this institutionalized form of homophobia,” Quinn said in an email.

The FDA ban was established in 1983 due to growing concerns surrounding the HIV/AIDS epidemic that swept the nation and particularly affected the American gay community. The ban remains in place despite 30 years of technological and medical advancement that allows HIV testing, said UC Berkeley senior Michelle Carney, who co-sponsored the bill.

According to a study by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, lifting the ban would allow more than 2.6 million eligible men to make blood donations, providing 219,200 pints of donated blood.

Carney said 24 percent of blood donations for the American Red Cross in the Bay Area comes from high school and college students, making this issue particularly important for members of the UC Berkeley community.

“From organizing the blood drive ourselves (on campus), we as students were tired of seeing our community feel helpless and hopeless,” Carney said.

According to the FDA website, the ban on such donations is “not based on any judgment concerning the donor’s sexual orientation.”

In a statement released in June, however, the AABB (formerly known as the American Association of Blood Banks), America’s Blood Centers and the Red Cross said they believed that the FDA’s ban “should be modified and donor referral criteria should be made comparable with criteria for other behaviors that pose an increased risk for transmission of transfusion-transmitted infections.”

“I definitely think it’s a really good start,” said UC Berkeley freshman Anthony Barros, who works in Quinn’s office and was involved in writing the bill. “Bringing visibility and awareness of this issue to Cal will be the best first steps to make change on this issue.”

Jennie Yoon is the lead student government reporter. Contact her at jyoon@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @jennieyoon_.

The post ASUC Senate passes bill opposing FDA ban on blood donations from gay men appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Kore Chan/File

An ASUC Senate bill introduced Wednesday criticizes the UC Berkeley administration’s decision to hold the majority of classes on Oct. 1 after an explosion left most of campus without power the previous evening.

The bill, authored by Independent Campaign for Common Sense Senator Solomon Nwoche, calls on administrators to promptly inform students of class cancellations after emergencies. The bill will be discussed at an ASUC Senate committee meeting Monday night.

After an explosion near California Hall on the evening of Sept. 30, electrical crews worked through the night to bring power back to campus buildings.

At 5:30 a.m. on Oct. 1, campus officials notified students, faculty and staff that power had been restored to all but 11 buildings, including Dwinelle Hall.

Classes took place as normal in all buildings except those 11, to the dismay of many students who felt they had been inconvenienced by power outages in several campus residence halls the night before.

“Even best-case scenario, let’s say your assignment didn’t have any technology component — you were stuck reading in the dark,” Nwoche said regarding students living in the residence halls.

The bill, SB 27, lambastes the campus’s choice to hold most classes as usual, calling it an “irrational decision,” but also lauds Chancellor Nicholas Dirks’ acknowledgement that there was a lack of communication from campus administrators after the incident.

The bill’s text suggests implementing a campus policy whereby administrators inform students of class cancellations before 1 a.m. after an emergency. Nwoche said he would like the bill’s language to be amended to request that the announcement come within a seven- to eight-hour window after an emergency, with classes being automatically canceled after that time.

Claire Holmes, associate vice chancellor for public affairs, explained the challenges of pinning down parameters for campus emergency response.

“It is hard to dictate emergency situations because they are unpredictable and constantly evolving,” she said. Holmes does, however, agree that students and staff ought to be given as much notice as possible of class cancellations.

Both Student Action Senator Sahil Pandya and SQUELCH! Senator Grant Fineman support having a discussion about the campus’s response after the incident, but said they remain uncertain about the text of the bill itself.

“The bill comes from a very good place,” Fineman said. “It’s important in a big disaster to get information out to students quickly and efficiently, but I do understand that the administration was dealing with a lot of moving parts.”

CalSERVE Senator Briana Mullen said she would not vote for the current iteration of the bill.

“We need to be smart about when we use bills,” Mullen said. “If we don’t make policy in tandem with administrators, they are not going to respect it.”

ASUC President DeeJay Pepito said she plans to work with students and administrators to review campus outreach during emergency situations.

“The process is ongoing and continuously improving,” Pepito said in a text message forwarded from her chief of staff, Austin Pritzkat.

Contact Kimberly Veklerov at kveklerov@dailycal.org.

The post ASUC bill criticizes decision to hold classes after UC Berkeley explosion, power outage appeared first on The Daily Californian.

CalSERVE Senator Wendy Pacheco introduced the bill Sept. 25 to address cultural insensitivity on campus after the campus fraternity Delta Chi hosted a quinceanera-themed party Sept. 21.

The bill, SB 16, was discussed at Monday’s external committee meeting, where members of both the multicultural and Greek communities gathered to discuss concerns about Delta Chi’s party.

Many members of the campus Latino community said at the meeting that they were upset by party’s theme, which they claimed appropriated Latino culture and mocked Mexican traditions. Members of the Greek community at the committee meeting recognized the concerns about Delta Chi’s behavior.

The bill was amended significantly during the committee meeting after students in the Greek community raised concerns about what they said was harsh language in the bill. Student Action Senator Lauren Week, who is in a sorority, said she felt she was “being attacked” by the language of the bill.

Interfraternity Council President Andrey Kisel also emphasized at the meeting that the bill’s language was especially harsh toward the Greek community.

The amended version of the bill was altered to reflect these concerns and notes that “this incident (at Delta Chi) is not reflective of the individual sentiment of each individual in the Greek community.”

The bill’s title was changed from “A Bill to Censure the Inter-Fraternity Council (IFC) for the Appropriate of Latin@/Xican@ Culture” to “A Bill Condemning the Negligence of Cultural Awareness within the Inter-Fraternity Council (IFC).”

The amended bill addresses more specifically what the ASUC believes it and the Greek community should do to make the Greek community a more “culturally aware body.” According to the bill, Delta Chi will be asked to write a public apology to the Xican@ and Latin@ community, and “cultural awareness training (will) be urged by ASUC for all student organizations on campus.”

The bill calls for the implementation of additional training programs and provisions within the Greek community to increase cultural sensitivity as well as communication and collaboration between the IFC and the UC Berkeley LEAD Center to raise cultural awareness.

“This bill is not about communities of color versus the greek community,” Pacheco said in a statement. “Instead this is the start of a conversation and hopefully a partnership between both communities to not only address the issue at hand but also to create a safe campus environment for everyone.”

Kisel echoed Pacheco’s sentiment that both communities should work together to address the incident at Delta Chi.

“(We) agree that what happened is major issue,” Kisel said. “We don’t want this to be a battle between any two communities.”

After a short senate meeting Wednesday, SB 16 passed without discussion.

“I wasn’t that surprised that it passed, only because there had been a considerable amount of working together with the Greek community and the senators that represent (it),” Pacheco said after the meeting.

Jennie Yoon is the lead student government reporter. Contact her at jyoon@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @jennieyoon_.

The post ASUC Senate passes bill condemning cultural insensitivity in Greek community appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The search committee is made up of 11 student, faculty and staff representatives, including ASUC President DeeJay Pepito, and is chaired by Anne De Luca, associate vice chancellor for admissions and enrollment.

The student forum drew about 20 students who voiced the importance of having a dean of students who is accessible and transparent, according to Austin Pritzkat, Pepito’s chief of staff.

Students said they wanted a dean who would actively participate with students and implement an open-door policy by holding informal meetings with students.

After a November 2011 Occupy Cal protest, Poullard agreed with former UC Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau that students linking arms to prevent police from entering an encampment was not “nonviolent civil disobedience.” In response, students at the meeting expressed concerns that the new dean must understand the rationale behind student protest.

Graduate Assembly President Max Gee, who also sits on the committee, said that he and Pepito will attend all search committee meetings to “make sure the priorities of the undergraduate students are met.”

“The search has just begun, and students will have a voice along every step of the way,” Gee said.

Other search committee members were also present at the student forum. David Robinson, associate campus counsel and a member of the committee, said the feedback about what the students at the forum said they wanted and what was discussed at the committee meetings were very similar.

“The dean of students needs to be someone who has communication skills and an ability to really listen to what the student priorities are,” Robinson said. “The dean needs to engage with students and student leadership as partners.”

According to De Luca, the committee discussed looking for someone who understands the unique dynamics of a public institution like UC Berkeley and who is committed to the type of diversity found in the campus community.

Currently, David Surratt is serving as the interim dean of students and will continue to do so until a replacement is found.

The committee, which has only had one meeting so far on Sept. 25, is in the early stages of finding that replacement. De Luca said there is no deadline and hopes to have finalists on campus to meet with different stakeholder groups by early February.

“Our next step is to review the draft of the position profile, and once it is approved, to begin to advertise the position,” De Luca said. “The committee will then focus on sharing the news of the position and encouraging applications from student affairs professionals nationwide.”

Jane Nho covers student government. Contact her at jnho@dailycal.org.

Correction(s):
A previous version of this article incorrectly identified Anne DeLuca as associate vice chancellor for admissions and enrollment and acting director of undergraduate admissions. In fact, DeLuca is only the associate vice chancellor for admissions and enrollment.

The post UC Berkeley students express hopes for new dean of students appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Kore Chan/File

Although a recently introduced ASUC Senate bill that asks senators to wear magnetic nametags is intended to increase ASUC transparency, it has been met with skepticism by senators and students alike.

The bill, SB 21, authored by Independent Campaign for Common Sense Senator Solomon Nwoche, asks senators to wear nametags around campus and in class. It also asks ASUC Student Advocate Timofey Semenov to write a letter encouraging campus administrators to do the same.

“The motive behind my bill is for students to be able to identify their elected officials so they can hold them accountable,” Nwoche said. “Theoretically, students can already search us through a search engine and see who we are anyways. All this nametag does is put this search into a more transparent form.”

Nolan Pack, the ASUC executive vice president, said the ASUC has already taken steps to improve its transparency. He said that the ASUC has made its agendas and meeting schedules more accessible online and that it has also begun webcasting senate meetings.

“I’m a strong proponent of making the ASUC more transparent and more accessible, and I want to make sure we’re using our time and resources to achieve that goal in a substantive way,” Pack said in an email. “As far as SB 21, it remains unclear to me whether or not this bill will promote transparency in a meaningful way.”

Some UC Berkeley undergraduates say they are unsure whether the nametags would be useful within the campus community. UC Berkeley sophomore Elena Behar said most students on campus already know who the ASUC executive officials and senators are through general interactions.

“I’m not sure if people would just want to go up to people and talk to (the ASUC senators and executive officials),” Behar said. “I think relationships (between students and senators) could also be altered, because people could feel that they’re potentially influencing senator decisions.”

Although the bill would not require senators to wear nametags, it would strongly encourage them to do so. Members of the senate, however, said the nametags could create obstacles in their everyday lives.

SQUELCH! Senator Grant Fineman said that although the bill might increase the transparency and visibility of the senate, there are many drawbacks to it.

“It could also come off the wrong way, like we’re being arrogant, like we’re showing our position at all times,” Fineman said.

CalSERVE Senator Caitlin Quinn echoed Fineman’s concerns, saying the nametags would “assert our presence too much.”

“In the classroom, we’re there to learn, just like everyone else,” Quinn said.

SB 21 will be debated Monday at the senate finance committee’s meeting.

The post ASUC Senate to debate bill asking senators to wear nametags appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Kore Chan/Staff

A quinceanera-themed party hosted by Delta Chi on Sept. 21 has been met with controversy by students of color and has prompted the introduction of an ASUC Senate bill condemning the event.

Many students criticized the party as an act of cultural appropriation of Latino culture. The bill, SB 16, calls for the ASUC to “condemn culturally appropriated theme parties” and urges the university to implement a racial sensitivity curriculum for the Greek community.

The bill also asks Delta Chi to write a public apology to the campus Latino community for appropriating its cultural traditions and reproducing cultural stereotypes for entertainment purposes.

According to SB 16, authored by CalSERVE Senator Wendy Pacheco, some party attendees were dressed in attire “reflective of ‘cholos.’ ”

“For people in the Mexican community, quinceaneras are usually for young women who transition from being a girl into a woman,” Pacheco said. “That’s very important in our community, and for someone to take that and turn it into a party scene and dress up with sombreros and mustaches and reflect those stereotypes of what Mexican culture is is not OK.”

Members of the fraternity, however, say there was no ill intent behind the party or its theme, which Delta Chi President Cody Kermanian said was suggested by Mexican members of the fraternity.

“A lot of the rhetoric in the bill assumes what our thoughts were without even talking to us about it,” Kermanian said. “The intention was never to marginalize, and it never has been nor will be.”

Student Action Senator Liza Raffi, who is a member of the Greek community, was in attendance at the party. She said her costume and the costumes of friends were not meant to mock Latino culture.

“If there were derogatory costumes there, I did not see them, but I understand that everyone’s definition of offensive is different,” Raffi said. “I now understand that the idea of a fiesta plays into larger concern of cultural appropriation that has history stretching beyond the party.”

According to Dustin Page, a LEAD Center coordinator for fraternity and sorority advising and leadership development, fraternity chapters must register social events through their respective councils, which then share the events with the LEAD Center for review. The LEAD Center is a unit of the ASUC Auxiliary in student affairs, and it advises CalGreeks as well as other student organizations.

Page said that because Delta Chi’s event was not registered with the Interfraternity Council, the LEAD Center had no prior knowledge of it.

The party at Delta Chi is part of a larger pattern of cultural appropriation on campus, said David Jaramillo, a sponsor of the bill and a member of a campus Latino fraternity, Lambda Upsilon Lambda.

“We are a part of CalGreeks, and we feel very disappointed in the fact that the Greek community is continuously perpetrating acts of cultural insensitivity and racism,” Jaramillo said.

Last year, another campus fraternity faced condemnation from the ASUC Senate. The fraternity, Theta Delta Chi, was accused of racism after hanging a figure outside of its house during Halloween. Although the fraternity claimed the figure was a zombie, others said the decoration resembled a lynching. In response, the senate approved a bill that urged the campus and the Interfraternity Council to hold Theta Delta Chi “responsible for reckless disregard of the risk of terrorizing the campus community.”

SB 16 also includes language referencing the “Compton Cookout,” an event hosted by a UC San Diego fraternity stereotyping black culture that garnered national attention.

External Affairs Vice President Safeena Mecklai, however, who is an active member of the Greek community, said Delta Chi’s party cannot be compared to the Compton Cookout. She said the bill uses examples of racial insensitivity from other schools to villainize the Greek community.

“Cultural appropriation is a problem across campus, not just the Greek community,” Mecklai said. “I think it would be more constructive to look at the climate of the entire campus.”

The post ASUC Senate to consider bill condemning quinceanera-themed frat party appeared first on The Daily Californian.

SB 9, co-authored and sponsored by External Affairs Vice President Safeena Mecklai, calls upon the ASUC to express its position on Prop. 13 to the university and elected officials, including Gov. Jerry Brown.

The bill proposes a number of reforms to Prop. 13, including the regular reassessment of nonresidential commercial property, which would lead to at least $6 billion in additional revenue for state funding.

The bill attributes California’s dramatic higher education funding cuts to the state’s “inequitable tax structure.”

Supporters of Prop. 13 reform hope the additional revenue will help reverse a trend of deep cuts to state funding for higher education that have caused UC Berkeley’s tuition to rise from $6,654 in 2007 to $12,834 in 2013. The cuts have made it increasingly difficult for low- and middle-income students to attend college.

Jennie Yoon is the lead student government reporter. Contact her at jyoon@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @jennieyoon_.

The post ASUC Senate unanimously passes bill to support reforming Prop. 13 appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The bill, written and co-sponsored by CalSERVE Senator Caitlin Quinn, opposes the construction of the extension of the current Keystone pipeline that could harm the environment and the economy due to the harmful nature of extracting and refining crude oil from tar sands.

The bill, which passed by an 18-1 margin, instructs ASUC President DeeJay Pepito to write a letter to President Barack Obama formally expressing the ASUC’s position on the Keystone XL pipeline.

The pipeline would be harmful to the “environment, agriculture, native peoples, farmers in the Midwest, the health and safety of Americans, unionized workers, and the American economy,” the bill states.

The bill addresses concerns that pipeline construction will harm the environment without helping economies. It states that the Keystone XL pipeline would create only 35 permanent jobs and that 85 to 90 percent of the temporary jobs created by pipeline construction would not go toward job creation in local communities.

The Amalgamated Transit Union and the Transport Workers Union have also expressed opposition to the construction of the pipeline, according to the bill. The workers’ unions stated that rather than investing in the pipeline, jobs should go toward energy conservation research and public transportation improvement.

Jennie Yoon is the lead student government reporter. Contact her at jyoon@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @jennieyoon_.

Correction(s):
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the ASUC Senate passed SB 11 unanimously. In fact, the bill passed on a vote of 18-1.

The post ASUC Senate passes bill in opposition to Keystone XL pipeline appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Steve Rhodes/Courtesy

The ASUC Senate’s University and External Affairs Committee approved a bill at its meeting Monday that opposes the construction of Keystone XL, an extension of the Keystone Pipeline, which is now pending approval of the entire senate.

The pipeline, which would transfer crude oil from tar sands in Alberta to refineries in Texas, is politically controversial and has raised concern among students due to its potentially detrimental effects on the environment. According to the bill, SB 11, the process of refining oil from tar sands requires more energy and water than refining oil from traditional sources and generates more greenhouse gases.

The bill also reflects concern that the extraction processes will occur near the homes of indigenous populations. Many indigenous communities, particularly those in Alberta, not only have been removed from their lands but also have seen increases in diseases such as cancer, the bill states.

“It is a major issue that is killing people and has the potential to kill even more people,” said CalSERVE Senator Caitlin Quinn, who authored the bill. “Clearly, it doesn’t stretch to California, but it is a major issue we should address.”

ASUC Executive Vice President Nolan Pack authored a similar bill last year that urged the UC system to divest its funds from fossil-fuel companies. He said he applauded Quinn for her work with the environmental community to author this bill.

“Fossil-fuel divestment and defeating Keystone XL are two parts of the same movement to free us from the chains of an outdated and toxic energy infrastructure,” Pack said. “Keystone is of particular importance because if built, it will enable the release of enough CO2 to guarantee catastrophic climate change — it’s been referred to as a ‘game over’ moment.”

Proponents of the Keystone XL pipeline say it will improve the economy by creating jobs while ending the need for overseas energy imports.

“While developing cleaner sources of energy should be a long-term goal, today this country still depends on imported oil,” said Brendan Pinder, president of Berkeley College Republicans. “In addition to creating jobs, this pipeline would help shift our dependence from the volatile Middle East to Canada, a stable country with more responsible environmental regulations.”

If the full senate passes the bill, ASUC President DeeJay Pepito will write a letter to President Barack Obama asking him to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline for the reasons outlined in the bill.

“As a research institution that actually gets a ton of money from BP and Chevron, we should still have the autonomy to take stances on these issues,” Quinn said. “There’s been a lot of activism on (the Keystone Pipeline) recently, and I prefer to address things proactively instead of waiting until after Obama’s decision.”

UC Berkeley professor of energy Daniel Kammen agreed the tar sands represent more of an environmental threat than traditional sources of petroleum.

“The ASUC is correct in wanting to block this, because the pipeline will make the climate worse,” Kammen said. “If the U.S. was starving for energy, maybe I would understand, but the thing is, we’re not starving for fossil fuels.”

The post ASUC Senate committee passes bill opposing Keystone XL appeared first on The Daily Californian.