Currently on the table: An ASUC Senate bill suggests ASUC senators and administrators wear nametags around campus and in class — a never-ending “Hello, My Name Is” reminding us that we are indeed in the age of 24/7 accessibility.

Will this bill — authored by Independent Campaign for Common Sense Senator Solomon Nwoche —  create just enough transparency? Or does it cross the line into high-and-mighty name-dropping? Or will it just look completely ridiculous?

In 2000, a group almost as famous as the ASUC had a similar request — suggesting its members’ names be spoken when they were addressed. We thought Destiny’s Child might be the perfect group to describe this ASUC problem:

To the tune of Destiny’s Child’s “Say My Name” (Protip: play the song while reading these lyrics):

Say the name, say the name

No matter who’s around you

They’re the ones you turn to

Transparency’s the aim

Wear the name, wear the name

The nametags on the daily

Some think this bill is crazy

Why the sudden change?

Say the name, say the name

In campus or in classes

Will they look like pompous asses?

Admin could do the same

Know the name, know the name

Don’t know them from elections?

No longer have those questions

These are the goals, they claim

Sep-tem-ber Eighteen

Got brought up, they convened

S B Twenty-One

Done by Senator Solomon

They exchanged their words, some “uh-huhs,” some “OKs”

Will this bill achieve

What they want it to portray

If they took it there

First of all, let us say

Would it make us look

Up to them, the wrong way

They don’t want to seem

Arrogant or too vain

But all these things aside 

Accountability’s still the price of fame…

Image Source: maybeemily under Creative Commons

Contact Leah Hegyi at lhegyi@dailycal.org.

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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.

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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.

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This spring, students voted for a bold new vision for the ASUC. Assumptions were challenged, an entrenched majority was uprooted and new voices were chosen to breathe life into our student government.

I campaigned as a student, an activist and an advocate. I was democratically elected to serve as executive vice president because of my experience and conviction. Though former Senators Mihir Deo and Rosemary Hua advance their own personal vision for the EVP position, (“Pack’s non-neutrality hurts ASUC,” Sept. 13) neither was elected to serve in this role. Their excessively narrow interpretation of the EVP’s role does not reflect the letter or the spirit of our governing documents and effectively undermines the vote of the student body.

It’s important for the EVP to take a stance on matters presented to the senate if she or he feels that an issue warrants such a response. In fact, I praise last year’s EVP, Justin Sayarath, for taking a stand in October against Measure S, which would have banned sitting on public sidewalks in Berkeley. Sayarath not only co-authored a letter to the Berkeley City Council urging them to not support the measure, but he also cosponsored my bill — SB 64 — that opposed Measure S when it came before the Senate. It’s fascinating that former Senators Deo and Hua demand silence from the EVP today, since they never expressed such concerns last year, when that seat was held by a member of their own party.

It’s important that we use consistent standards for our elected officials, regardless of which party holds a given office. The EVP is charged with ensuring that the ASUC as an institution is transparent and accountable. My experience as an activist and an advocate informs my work as EVP regarding important decisions about how we manage our spaces on campus and how we as a university embrace our role in combating environmental degradation. As I maintain stances on many issues that are external to the ASUC, I recognize that critical self-reflection can be the most powerful catalyst for driving change.

In my role as chair of the ASUC senate, I envision the Senate as a space where real work can get done — where there is open and productive dialogue, where all voices are included and where our elected senators can voice independent opinions about issues on which they may disagree. This is how good public policy is produced. I offer my understanding of the Senate and my experience with parliamentary procedure to help move the discussion forward and allow senators to confront the real issues at hand. The EVP is tasked with ensuring that all senators have the opportunity to participate in straightforward discussion on the Senate floor and are ultimately empowered to cast an informed vote.

It’s necessary to create a space for discussion among senators that is informed by public comments from students-at-large and allows senators to think critically about the decisions before them. As EVP, I strive to create this kind of space in each Senate meeting.

The ASUC Senate is the final legislative and fiscal authority in our student government. It has the ability to take official positions on behalf of the ASUC and direct the executive officers to enforce those decisions. That relationship does not function in reverse. I believe strongly in the autonomy of the Senate and respect the Senate as a branch of the ASUC that is distinct from the executive offices.

Similarly, I believe that each senator must take ownership of the decisions she or he makes and the votes she or he casts. I believe that our senators have the maturity to come to the table with open minds and engage each other in frank discussion to resolve points of disagreement.

As elected officials, the senators answer to the campus community. All of our student communities have the right to come to a meeting and see how their senators are representing them. A public discussion that is accessible to students is the best way to encourage honesty and transparency, instead of political point-scoring or gamesmanship. We must come together around common values when we agree; we must be both civil and honest with one another when we don’t.

The EVP’s stance on a given issue can and does coexist with the stances of other elected officials. While I have disagreed with past and present colleagues on a range of policy issues and have been critical of the stances they took, I have never attempted to deny any ASUC official the right to express her or his opinion on an issue. I stand by the assertion that we can all take stances and that when we do, we should expect to be held accountable for them. Criticism and honest disagreement are necessary for promoting intellectual diversity in the Senate. None of us in the ASUC should expect to be comfortable with every differing view that’s expressed or with every piece of criticism we receive. It is this discomfort that forces serious self-reflection and reconsideration of assumptions and beliefs, and it is through this regular re-evaluation that we make progress together.

I leave you, the readers, with these wise words from Elie Weisel: “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

Nolan Pack is the ASUC executive vice president.

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External Affairs Vice President Safeena Mecklai said voter registration forms had been ordered for every person living in the residence halls in an effort to increase voter registration. She also discussed her plans to bridge the gap between UC Berkeley students and the city of Berkeley by encouraging student involvement in events such as Sundays on Telegraph, a weekly fair that closes off two blocks on Telegraph Avenue.

Executive Vice President Nolan Pack announced that the senate meetings would soon be available via podcast to make them more accessible to students. Pack emphasized the importance of increasing transparency and said the podcasts would allow students and community members to comment online about bills and debates at senate meetings.

Four bills were sent to various senate committees for further review. The first bill, SB 1, authored by Pack, is titled Bill in Support of the Advocacy Agenda. Among other matters, the bill asks the senate to take action on everything from protesting budget cuts and library closures to promoting disaster preparedness on campus. The bill also emphasizes issues related to campus climate, including the development of a new and comprehensive strategy to report hate crimes on campus and increasing resources for LGBT students.

SB 2, titled Bill in Support of Undocumented Students and Immigrant Communities, asks ASUC President DeeJay Pepito to propose a review of incoming UC president Janet Napolitano’s selection, emphasizing the ASUC Senate’s support of undocumented youth and immigrant communities. Napolitano, who is currently the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, was announced as the new UC president in June. However, her appointment was not without controversy, as she has faced significant criticism from students who say her record on security, surveillance and immigration is of serious concern.

The third bill, in support of Northside student residents, is a response to the Berkeley Student District Campaign map, which aims to create a student-majority district in the city of Berkeley. However, as it is currently drawn, the district would exclude certain Northside co-ops as well as International House and three campus residence halls. The proposed bill resolves that the ASUC will not support any student district plan that excludes the Northside co-ops.

A final bill asked that $300 be allocated to the campus organization Conflict Free Campus Initiative at Berkeley, which promotes activism to bring peace to the Congo.

The next ASUC Senate meeting will take place Sept. 11.

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

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Contact Mitchell Handler and Libby Rainey at newsdesk@dailycal.org.

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Elected representatives of the UC Berkeley student body like Pacheco and Landgraf have an obligation to be honest and transparent about their actions. This is especially paramount when it comes to controversial topics like the debate around SB 160, a bill the senate passed nearly two weeks ago that calls for divestment from companies associated with the Israeli military. Pacheco offered to drop completely unrelated charges against Landgraf’s executive order putting the health and wellness referendum on the ballot if Landgraf did not veto the bill. Though he indicated in his handwritten note to Landgraf that his offer should not be the deciding factor, its very existence calls his motives into question.

Pacheco somehow needs to be held accountable for his actions. Landgraf made the right call by being forthcoming to the ASUC attorney general about what happened; Pacheco should face charges if at all possible. If no grounds exist to charge Pacheco for his ethical breach, then the ASUC Senate must at the very least take steps to prohibit such actions from recurring in the future.

On a broader level, Pacheco’s note is one of several indicators of the extent to which divestment has negatively impacted the campus. Considering that senators have received threatening messages and the physical assault that occurred on campus before the vote, the ASUC and the campus administration should intervene. Students must feel safe on campus, even after expressing controversial political beliefs, and they must be able to have faith that the ASUC is operating with integrity and accountability.

ASUC President-elect DeeJay Pepito would do well to focus on improving campus climate as she begins her term. Though many students disagree about the necessity of divestment, all should be able to acknowledge that some of the reactions have reflected poorly on the UC Berkeley community. And as the assault and the general reaction to divestment show, the problem transcends the boundaries of the ASUC. All student groups need to be engaged in a meaningful way moving forward so that none feel UC Berkeley is not a safe or welcoming place for them.

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Nothing like a scandalous political quid pro quo, complete with new information about an ideologically stained physical assault on Sproul alongside bylaw violation charges galore to awaken our senses. I give you, Divestment: Season 2. After this latest flood of melodrama, politicians in Washington, D.C., and Sacramento look like snoozers.

Please understand, this is not a column about divestment and the many reasons it is an ineffective, rash and brazenly ignorant way to address the staggering conflict in Palestine. There have been human rights violations that require legitimate objection and scrutiny on the world stage, but few students at UC Berkeley truly understand the tense realities of living in a nation surrounded by enemies who desire nothing more than your nation’s complete annihilation. “From the river to the sea,” is the oft-repeated slogan. But this column is not about divestment. The only solution of any lasting quality to our public woes is a campuswide shift in political culture that transcends the issues.

Nor is this a column about judicial charges and constitutional violations. Former Daily Cal columnist and SQUELCH! senator Noah Ickowitz and former Student Action external affairs vice president Joey Freeman filed charges with the ASUC Judicial Council on Friday, alleging rampant constitutional violations in the passage of SB 160. Like America’s cultural obsession with litigation and the inevitable flurry of court cases that follows any major legislation in Sacramento and Washington, the charges of both Ickowitz and Freeman demonstrate a foolhardy determination not to lose this battle, no matter what the broader costs are of prolonging the conflict. In an interview with The Daily Californian, Ickowitz acknowledged that personal ideology was part of his motivation for dragging on this looming legal fiasco. But this is also not a column about ASUC legal affairs.

And this is not a column about ASUC Senator Jorge Pacheco’s recent public foul-up with ASUC President Connor Landgraf. Pacheco reportedly offered last Tuesday to remove his Judicial Council injunction on Landgraf’s health and wellness referendum in exchange for Landgraf opting not to veto the divestment bill Pacheco supported — classic you-scratch-my-back I’ll-scratch-yours political positioning. It’s embarrassing for Pacheco to place himself on such morally questionable grounds, embarrassing for the ASUC to become embroiled in the debacle and embarrassing for UC Berkeley students regardless of ideology. But this column is not about the latest of ASUC scandals, either.

Finally, this is not a column about “campus climate” or a plea for any recently mistreated Berkeley “communities.” Attend any ASUC Senate meeting or elections event, and one will quickly discover the true power those two simple phrases have over student political discourse at UC Berkeley. As George Orwell would have said, those phrases have “lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.” But, alas, this is not a column about tired political rhetoric.

This is a column about simple maturity.

More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek philosopher Isocrates criticized the Athenian democracy of his day by accusing it of training citizens to “(look upon) insolence as democracy, lawlessness as liberty, impudence of speech as equality, and license to do what they pleased as happiness.” Isocrates’ ancient words were later written by others to reflect modern realities in the Aegean and elsewhere: “Democracy destroys itself because it abuses its right to freedom and equality. Because it teaches its citizens to consider audacity as a right, lawlessness as a freedom, abrasive speech as equality, and anarchy as progress.”

Isocrates on Berkeley politics: “Oh, please.” UC Berkeley and the ASUC are a perfect case studies for Isocrates’ theory, and as evidenced by the April 1 assault on a pro-Palestinian student at Sproul Plaza by a goon who disagreed with the victim’s political stance, we as a university are struggling to stop the bloodletting of overemotional worn-out rhetoric, repugnant political maneuvering and excessively theatrical squabbling that have characterized our campus for nearly a month — with no foreseeable end in sight.

More than anything else, campus politics is centered almost entirely on winning a disturbing and very public game — winning over votes, winning popular opinion and winning elections. It comes at the cost of a collaborative, academic atmosphere and civilized public dialogue.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We’d be wise to put the events of this month in perspective, to acknowledge that the ASUC is only a student government and that our politics do not, in fact, define us as individuals. What this campus needs most — and what Isocrates was hinting at — is a shift in the tone of public discourse.

Anything to stop the bleeding.

Contact Connor Grubaugh at cgrubaugh@dailycal.org or follow him on Twitter: @connorgrubaugh.

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SHIP was supposed to unite all UC campuses under a cohesive, well-managed health system that saved them money and eased the managerial burden by streamlining health coverage. Instead, students have seen that SHIP is too organizationally painful to operate effectively. Administrative mismanagement led to a deficit that was at one point projected at $57 million — a problem that seems like it could have been entirely avoided had the university done a better job communicating with the firm responsible for setting premiums.

Support for leaving SHIP has rapidly grown on campus over the  semester. In February, a group of administrators wrote that if SHIP’s operations were not “considerably improved” for the next academic year, individual campuses could opt out of the plan “to seek a more stable and financially viable health plan for students.” At a series of public forums in March, students weighed in on various proposals to tackle the plan’s deficit and toyed with the idea of jumping SHIP. Just two weeks ago, the ASUC Senate indicated unanimously that it supports withdrawing from the plan. Earlier this month, student leaders — including the ASUC and Graduate Assembly presidents — sent a letter to Chancellor Robert Birgeneau stating that “we have lost faith in UCOP’s ability to effectively manage the UC SHIP plan and believe pulling out is our only real option.”

Mismanagement as large as that which resulted in the plan’s current deficit could end up necessitating premium increases for students. To that end, as Graduate Assembly President Bahar Navab said in March, “If we start causing deterrents to students using care, then what’s the point of SHIP?” Before joining UC SHIP a few years ago, UC Berkeley successfully ran its own health plan. The campus should return to that model.

But the campus running its own health plan does not mean it is entirely immune to the problems that UC SHIP faced. Moving forward, it is imperative that campus administrators pay close attention to understanding what went wrong with UC SHIP so that the campus does not repeat those mistakes.

In the end, the final decision on whether UC Berkeley should withdraw from UC SHIP rests with Birgeneau. Given the commendable community input and public dialogue that has taken place so far, his choice is obvious. The campus would be better off on its own.

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In a study conducted by Jennifer Stellar, a UC Berkeley psychology doctoral student, and Robb Willer, an associate professor of sociology at Stanford University, the researchers explored the relationship between morality and economics. In a paper published this week in an online issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, they concluded that people believe morally tainted money has less value and less purchasing power.

“We tend to think of money as being really objective, but people actually attach a lot of subjective meaning to it,” Stellar said. “We wanted to show the connection between economics and rational decision-making and the fact that morality plays a huge role in our economic decisions.”

Willer and Stellar conducted an experiment involving 59 college-aged participants who were told to enter a mock raffle for a $50 cash prize sponsored by one of two corporations. They were subsequently divided into a “neutral money” group and an “immoral money” group.

The “neutral money” group was told that the raffle prize would be provided by Target, while the “immoral money” group was told their prize would be provided by Wal-Mart. The latter was explicitly told that Wal-Mart had been found guilty of numerous labor-law violations.

The researchers found that those in the
“immoral money” group filled out fewer tickets than those in the “neutral money” group, implying that the participants in the immoral group were not as determined to win the raffle prize because of its association with Wal-Mart.

“People possess powerful motivations to view themselves as fundamentally good and moral,” Willer said during an interview with the UC Berkeley Newscenter. “We find this motivation is so great that it can even lead people to disassociate themselves from money that has acquired negative moral associations.”

Participants were then told to estimate how many of eight food or beverage items — such as a gallon of milk — they could purchase with the $50, and the researchers found that subjects consistently believed money associated with Wal-Mart would buy fewer items.

“This reveals that those in the immoral group believed their money had less value because it is morally tainted,” Stellar said.

The results of the study resonate with ASUC President Connor Landgraf, who said he recognized the link between morality and decisions involving money.

“I absolutely agree with this — I think morality is one of the most important factors in making economic decisions, especially because money represents who we are,” he said.

Contact Jason Liu at jliu@dailycal.org.

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