Stefan Elgstrand/Courtesy

After two years of planning, some students are raising concerns about the ASUC-sponsored Berkeley redistricting map because the proposed student district excludes Northside residences, including nine Berkeley student housing cooperatives and three residence halls.

Stefan Elgstrand, a UC Berkeley senior and an intern for Councilmember Kriss Worthington since June, has introduced the United Student District Amendment, a proposal that includes Northside residences.

While both the ASUC map and the USDA aim to create a student-majority district to help elect a student representative to Berkeley City Council, proponents of each disagree on how to best represent interests of students and city residents.

Currently, Elgstrand is rallying support for his amendment prior to the City Council meeting on Sept. 10, when the council will continue discussing redistricting.

The ASUC-sponsored Berkeley Student District Campaign map started as a campaign platform for 2011-12 ASUC external affairs vice president Joey Freeman, a Student Action candidate.

The BSDC map creates a student district that encompasses Southside housing, the Greek community and the residence halls, with a 90 percent student population. The map is detailed in ASUC Senate Bill 65, which passed unanimously in the spring of 2013.

“The fact that this (amendment) was introduced so late is really difficult to deal with,” said ASUC External Affairs Vice President Safeena Mecklai of the proposed amendment, which she said the ASUC team has not agreed to. “I wouldn’t be comfortable with it going forward unless the senate endorses it.”

After the BSDC map was submitted in mid-March, Worthington questioned its inclusivity and motivated Elgstrand to draft an amendment.

“The BSDC people mostly live in the fraternities and sororities, so there’s a bit of a bias in that,” Elgstrand said. “From my perspective, since I’m not connected to any of those groups, I can make it more inclusive.”

Proponents say the BSDC map has received support from the Greek community, Cal Berkeley Democrats, Berkeley College Republicans, all 20 ASUC 2012-13 senators and some leaders of the Berkeley Student Cooperative, including ASUC Senator Jorge Pacheco, who is endorsed by the co-ops.

Now, other leaders in the BSC are reconsidering their stances, saying that the BSDC map underrepresents Northside housing. They are giving preference to the USDA proposal, which Elgstrand says includes 87.4 percent of the cooperative population, while the BSDC map only includes 38.1 percent.

“If the intention is to create a unified student district, then not including Northside dorms and co-ops seems to leave out an important population of students,” said Michelle Nacouzi, the 2013-14 president of the BSC.

Nacouzi and other members of the BSC said they were told that it was not feasible to include Northside co-ops in a student-majority district.

Noah Efron, the ASUC redistricting director and local affairs deputy, said the BSDC made several efforts to include the input of student groups by inviting leaders from the BSC, the Greek community and the residence halls to participate in public forums about the plan.

Despite their differences, both Elgstrand and Mecklai said they would prefer to maintain a unified student voice in demanding a student district. However, the ASUC will continue to support the BSDC map without changes to include Northside residences, while Elgstrand plans to push forward his amended plan.

Contact Saachi Makkar at smakkar@dailycal.org.

Correction(s):
A previous version of this article stated that the district proposed by the ASUC represents 90 percent of the student population, defined as residents between ages 18 to 29. In fact, it represents 86 percent of the student population.

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Nathaniel Solley/Staff

When former ASUC senator Sadia Saifuddin was appointed to the position of UC student-regent designate at this month’s UC Board of Regents meeting, what should have been a conversation focusing on the candidate’s qualifications devolved into a shameful spectacle.

The conversation to approve Saifuddin failed to assess her preparedness to be a successful student regent in favor of demonizing her for co-sponsoring a campus divestment bill this spring. The bill, which would have divested ASUC funds from companies that provide resources to the Israeli military, initially passed in the senate but was later found to have violated ASUC bylaws and stripped of its financial effects.

In a rare gesture, UC Regent Richard Blum abstained from the vote to approve Saifuddin, stating that he disagreed with Saifuddin’s point of view but did not know her well enough to warrant a negative vote. He justified his abstention by stating that Saifuddin’s support of divestment would alienate the student body and make her too divisive of a figure.

This is flawed reasoning. For one thing, not one current UC student stood up at the regents meeting to speak out against Saifuddin’s nomination or say that she would fail to adequately represent them. In fact, students and alumni, including former student regent Jonathan Stein came to her defense, saying that Saifuddin brought students together in the spring by inviting them to Muslim and Jewish student halls to discuss divestment.

Furthermore, given that UC Berkeley originally passed the resolution with more than half of its student senators in support of the bill and that similar resolutions have cropped up at at least three other UC campuses this past year, it’s clear that the issue is important to many UC students. For that reason, Blum’s claim that her support of divestment will make Saifuddin divisive feels more like an attempt to stifle legitimate political debate than to preserve student unity. Blum’s comments were out of line and seemed to be aimed at appeasing lobbyists critical of divestment.

It would be one thing if the board itself did not pick Saifuddin for the role. But the process of choosing Saifuddin is the same one that is used every year: Applicants must go through a series of interviews with campus and UC student government leaders before being interviewed and selected by a special committee of the UC Board of Regents.

If the regents felt Saifuddin would not be an adequate representative of the student body, they should have voiced their concerns earlier. Some of the regents said that though they respectfully disagreed with Saifuddin, they still respected her appointment through the long-standing student regent selection process. Blum should have taken a similar stance instead of focusing so heavily on divestment.

We are also very disappointed in the way that much of the commentary on Saifuddin’s appointment, both during public comment at the meeting and elsewhere, has been openly Islamophobic and perpetuated stereotypes that have nothing to do with the work she has done as a student senator or how she will perform in the student regent position.

We believe Saifuddin is a qualified candidate and worry that her reputation has been wrongfully damaged by some of the comments made at the board’s meeting. Student government representatives should be able to openly address controversial issues like divestment and involve the student body in honest political conversation, even when there is disagreement among students. The board hindered this conversation at its meeting by focusing on just one aspect of Saifuddin’s experience.

The post Overstepping boundaries appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Below is a sample of some of the items that will be discussed at the meeting:

Tuesday: Capital Projects

The Committee on Grounds and Buildings will review a plan to repair defects on 17 residential buildings at UC Santa Cruz.

Wednesday: Student regent and finance

The regents’ Special Committee on Selection of a Student Regent will recommend for approval UC Berkeley undergraduate and ASUC Senator Sadia Saifuddin as student regent.

If approved, Saifuddin will serve as regent-designate before becoming student regent from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015.

Also, the Committee on Finance will discuss updates on the university’s 2013-14 budget. This coming year, the state portion of the budget will increase from roughly $2.4 billion in 2012-13 to $2.8 billion. $125 million will come from a tuition buyout promised by the state in the 2012-13 fiscal year.

The budget also includes $10 million in funds previously allocated by Gov. Jerry Brown for online education in an earlier budget proposal. Brown later vetoed provisions in the budget that would have mandated the University of California spend the funds on online course development.

The university will still use the funds to offer about 150 online courses over the next three years, facilitating cross-campus coordination of academic programs and frameworks for evaluation and accountability within the programs, according to the regents’ agenda item.

The regents will also preliminarily discuss the 2014-15 budget. The UC Office of the President raised concerns over Brown’s call for a continued general tuition freeze without any promise to buy out an increase in tuition, according to the agenda item.

Issues concerning the 2014-15 budget will also be discussed in the regents’ September meeting prior to their  final adoption of the budget at their November meeting.

Thursday: Long-range planning

The Committee on Long Range Planning will review the annual University of California Accountability Report.

The report found that since 1990-91, average inflation-adjusted expenditures for educating UC students have declined 25 percent. However, the share of expenditures borne by students in the form of fees has more than tripled from 13 percent to 49 percent.

Contact Chase Schweitzer at cschweitzer@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @ChaseSchweitz.

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Elsa Pearson, Sureya Malkonian and Jacob Brown/File

Over nearly five decades, Eshleman Hall has survived thefts, vandalism, protests and at least five fires. But last week, the building was finally felled by a pair of massive hydraulic metal claws.

The seven-story building, which housed a variety of UC Berkeley student groups — including the ASUC and The Daily Californian — was gradually demolished over the course of about a month as part of the Lower Sproul Plaza renovation project, which aims to rejuvenate the plaza as a hub for student life on campus. The project is expected to continue through 2015 and will replace Eshleman Hall with a larger building, among other improvements.

But the memory of Eshleman Hall will be preserved through its colorful history as both a magnet for crime and protests and a hub for student groups that helped define the UC Berkeley campus experience.

Eshleman Hall was dedicated as a building for student offices on Sept. 18, 1965, after two years and more than $1 million in construction, at a time when the Free Speech Movement on campus was kicking into gear.

Issues surrounding the building’s name initially caused confusion on campus. The building was originally referred to as the Student Office Building — or S.O.B. for short — but university officials hoped to name the building after John Morton Eshleman, an early ASUC president who went on to become lieutenant governor of California.

However, another building on campus was already named after Eshleman. That building was renamed Moses Hall, the name it still uses today, and the newly constructed building was named Eshleman Hall.

Due to discrepancies between campus maps and the names affixed on the buildings, students frequently reported problems navigating between the “old Eshleman” and the “new Eshleman.”

The new Eshleman was beset by theft, vandalism and frequent fires over its 47-year history. Two fires in 1975 were attributed to arson, damaging the ASUC Senate chambers and several bathrooms at a total cost of about $40,000.

In November 1975, a fire ravaged Eshleman Hall, costing the student groups and ASUC about $40,000′s worth of damage.

A 1983 fire gutted the ASUC Senate chambers and critically injured a man inside at the time. The chambers were later remodeled at a cost of $106,000. Another fire struck the basement of Eshleman in 1989.

But arguably, the most grisly incident in Eshleman’s history was the 1992 death of UC Berkeley student Grace Asuncion, who was found dead by a janitor, apparently stabbed to death, in the offices of the Pilipino American Alliance on Eshleman’s fifth floor.

Asuncion’s death prompted improvements in building security, and her parents settled a $1 million lawsuit against the UC Board of Regents in 1996, but her killer was never found.

But although Eshleman was a site of occasional crimes, the building was best known as a hub for a variety of student groups throughout its history, including the Daily Cal from 1965 to 1971 and 1992 to 2012. The building, owned and operated by the ASUC, housed more than 200 student groups.

More recently, a protest occurred in Eshleman on Nov. 27, 2012, after the building was mostly vacant for demolition. About six students occupied the building as part of a campaign regarding the campus’s multicultural retention center and minority enrollment.

The Lower Sproul development plan, green-lighted by student approval of the B.E.A.R.S. Initiative in 2010, will be financed largely by additional student fees. Because of concerns with Eshleman’s “poor” seismic rating, it was decided the building would be demolished rather than go through expensive upgrades.

In addition to building to replace Eshleman, the $223 million project will also include renovations and improvements to the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union and the Cesar Chavez Student Center.

Contact Chris Yoder at cyoder@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @christiancyoder.

Clarification(s):
A previous version of this article may have implied that the student murdered in Eshleman Hall was stabbed by the janitor who found her body. In fact, the victim was found by the janitor a few hours after her death, apparently stabbed to death.

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Stefan Elgstrand/Courtesy

Berkeley City Council moved toward approving a new redistricting map at its meeting Tuesday by passing a motion supporting the ASUC-sponsored redistricting map.

The Berkeley Student District Campaign map would create a student-majority district south of the UC Berkeley campus, increasing the chances of a student representative being elected to Berkeley City Council. Final approval of a districting map is expected to be made in September.

By passing the motion, the council also diverted attention from two other plans, the Edge Simplicity Plan and an amended ASUC plan called the United Student District Amendment, proposed at Tuesday’s meeting.

The BSDC map continues to receive support from most council members. At the meeting, however, an amendment was introduced that would change the borders of the planned student-majority district to include more student residences, such as cooperative houses, residence halls and International House. The USDA amendment was proposed by Stefan Elgstrand, a UC Berkeley student and intern for Councilmember Kriss Worthington.

Elgstrand’s main concern with BSDC’s proposal is that it does not include students who reside on Northside, which includes nine co-op houses and three dormitories. Elgstrand said he is concerned for those students.

“They are paying thousands of dollars to be living in these areas, so they should at least have a voice in the local government,” he said.

Safeena Mecklai, ASUC external affairs vice president and a representative for the BSDC map, said that her primary goal is to make sure students are represented on the council and not necessarily to support the exact BSDC map.

“We’re in favor of any map that puts forward a student district, that works with the political process and that protects student interests,” Mecklai said. “If students feel that the map represents them, that’s a good thing.”

Several council members, however, said that the proposal of a new plan upsets the political integrity of the redistricting process.

“I feel uncomfortable for having this happen at the very last minute when it could have happened sooner,” said Councilmember Linda Maio at the meeting. “All of these plans went through a public process out in the community.”

Councilmember Kriss Worthington opposed the negative sentiment regarding the new amendment.

“The purpose of a public process is to hear ideas,” he said. “We received new information today that was never provided at previous meetings.”

The council ultimately passed a motion in support of the BSDC proposal with a vote of 7 to 2.

Mayor Tom Bates placed emphasis on the fact that the newly created district will not include all students but will geographically encompass several residential areas surrounding the Berkeley campus.

“I think that I’m planning on supporting the student district (BSDC proposal),” Bates said. “I just don’t want to call it a student district — I want to call it a campus district.”

The council will meet Sept. 10 to continue considering redistricting proposals.

Contact Saachi Makkar at smakkar@dailycal.org

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City of Berkeley/Courtesy

Berkeley City Council will hold a public hearing at its meeting Tuesday to draft an ordinance reflecting one of two city redistricting plans, both of which include a student-majority district.

City Council is deciding between two of seven resident-created plans. One, entitled the Edge Simplicity Plan, was drafted by Eric Panzer, a UC Berkeley alumnus in environmental science and city planning, while the other, drafted by the Berkeley Student District Campaign, is spearheaded by the ASUC.

BSDC’s proposal seeks to unite the student community, which is split into four different districts, into only one or two, with the goal of giving students greater influence in electing City Council representatives. According to ASUC redistricting director Noah Efron, these include issues like affordable housing, Telegraph Avenue development and student safety concerns.

The proposal is up against Panzer’s plan, which, according to him, contains only one “key difference” from the BSDC proposal: splitting the UC Berkeley Greek community from the Willard neighborhood student community. Panzer’s plan would still provide a student-majority district. He supports the BSDC’s proposal over his own, saying that despite the appealing geometry of his map, “keeping communities of interest together should trump minor geometric concerns.”

But Jacquelyn McCormick, a mayoral candidate in last year’s election, views neither plan as adequately representing neighborhood community interests.

“We believe students need a voice,” McCormick said. “Neighborhoods need to be kept together.”

McCormick is currently gathering signatures for a petition requesting that the Berkeley Neighborhood Council’s proposal, which was discarded because of an oversized West Berkeley district, be brought back into consideration.

The proposal preserves the student-majority district while also maintaining the unity of Berkeley neighborhood associations that the other proposals divide into separate districts.

District 4 Councilmember Jesse Arreguin says it is unlikely the Berkeley Neighborhood Council plan will gain retrospective support from City Council.

According to Arreguin, City Council plans on discussing the possibility of altering the accepted proposal to integrate Northside co-ops and residences to “really unite the student community in one district,” though Efron said he does not see such a plan as possible without diminishing the effectiveness of the ASUC’s current proposed map.

Despite concerns over limited student attendance during the summer recess, Efron said student representatives will continue to support the proposed map.

“We feel that students have shown how invested they are in this issue by maintaining engagement over the whole three-year process,” he said. “You will definitely still see student leaders at the meeting still pushing our issues.”

Tuesday’s hearing will be open to public comment, after which City Council may recommend a plan to city staff for an ordinance to be voted on at a later date.

Contact Micah Fry at mfry@dailycal.org.

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The first time I learned to identify myself as “white” on official government papers, I thought it was rather funny. To 12- year-old me, the term “white” did not extend beyond skin color, and the thought of me being identified in this way was so blatantly wrong that I didn’t know what to make of it other than a joke. By the time I was checking off “white” in the UC application as a high school student, however, it had stopped being funny. Instead, having to identify as “white” after reading through the entire list a few times felt constricting. This institute that prides itself on higher education, activism and diversity was clearly not wide enough for my cultural background.

This is the part where I tell you that with so-and-so percentage of Arab-Americans on campus, I’m surprised that the Arab-American community was not represented among the ethnic categories listed at the time.

Unfortunately, due to this lack of ethnic representation, this data is currently unavailable on the UC Berkeley enrollment website.

Since 1977, students identifying as Middle Eastern have been instructed to mark “white” in all federal and UC forms — with students marking “other” automatically reclassified as “white” in the U.S. census. Consistent efforts have been made to rectify this situation on both the federal and UC levels, among which was the “Invisible Minority in Campaign” initiative launched at UCLA in 2009 following the success of the Count Me In! Campaign. Unfortunately, the campaign did not gain enough momentum until it was rebooted at UC Berkeley in 2010 in collaboration with other UC campuses.

A real breakthrough occurred this past spring, however, with the passage of a new UC bill addressing the situation. Commonly known as SWANA, this new measure will expand the racial categories on the UC application to encompass a new category for Middle Eastern students, titled SWANA (South West Asian/ North African) starting in the 2013-2014 application cycle. SWANA students can now mark a separate box altogether, with 32 subcategories based on national identification.

But why is a simple check mark such a milestone in the history of the Arab-American community? The fact that this question was posed by many UC Berkeley students exemplifies the prior invisibility of the Arab community on campus better than my words ever could. Some students admitted they had not realized it was an issue at all.

The importance of SWANA has to do with why race is requested on the UC application to begin with. Contrary to common belief, racial categorization does not factor into UC admissions decisions at all, but is used to measure retention rates and to monitor campus diversity following admission. This data collection is vital for understanding educational accessibility within marginalized communities. Consequently, exclusion from these statistics has cost years of understanding the Arab-American community’s socio-economic conditions and learning how to advance them.

This checkbox doesn’t simply recognize the presence of a Middle Eastern student population on campus — a population previously made invisible by the insistence on classifying it as “white” — but it serves as a pathway for recruitment and retention services to better integrate this community. Having raw data to back up requests like the creation of an Arab American Studies program, for example, or the inclusion of Arab Americans in scholarship opportunities like the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (which lists African Americans, Chicanos/Latinos and Native Americans as its target minority groups) would give them credibility and power.

Yet some students are concerned this measure would “unfairly benefit” non-disadvantaged students at the expense of “programs aimed at the socially and economically disadvantaged” in the words of the ASUC senate bill. I understand where this concern is coming from, but the follow-up question on the UC application regarding parents’ income should take care of this issue. It is unfair to assume that all households within a minority group fall within the same income range.

Financial resources aside, the SWANA senate bill has been a struggle for recognition more than anything else. “I’m glad this checkbox will be there when I apply to graduate school,” an Armenian friend of mine said. “If you’re going to ask for my ethnicity, at least give me the right options to answer you.”
And I agree. But recognition goes far beyond an educational institute brimming with open-minded individuals to begin with. As much as I rejoice at this victory for the Arab-American community, I’d like to be able to mark “SWANA” next time I’m applying for a job or filling out a government form. That is the next milestone in sight.

Amy Mostafa writes a Thursday column on cultural issues. Contact Amy Mostafa at amostafa@dailycal.org.

The post No longer an invisible minority appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Melanie Chan/Staff

Radical. From the latin word “radix,” or root. Square a number, and the number it came from is the root. Let’s liken squared numbers to the lack of public confidence in the government to serve our best interests. How about 25 — only roughly a quarter of Americans in a January 2013 Pew Poll trusted the government to do the right thing always or most of the time. Arguably, at the root of this problem (it’s not five) is the corrupting influence of money in politics that cripples the participation and proper functioning of our democracy. The Supreme Court’s ruling on Citizen’s United has become the bratty poster child of this rooted problem, as it allowed corporations and labor unions to spend unlimited amounts of money to persuade people to vote for their favored candidate.

The passage of the People’s Right referendum in the ASUC elections this past spring made UC Berkeley the first student body in the nation to have taken an official stance against Citizens United, setting the stage for other universities in the nation to take similar action.

Members of the UC Berkeley chapters of Common Cause and Rootstrikers as well as a member of the student body senate collaborated to write the referendum in opposition to the Supreme Court’s ruling on Citizens United, the decision that has enabled corporations to funnel limitless amounts of money toward political candidates on the grounds that money is speech. The referendum now mandates that the presidents of the student body and Graduate Assembly send letters to President Obama, Gov. Brown and other elected officials, urging them to push for an amendment to the Constitution that would overturn or eradicate the Citizens United ruling.

As a Rootstriker myself, I believe that the People’s Right referendum was a powerful assertion of student power in working toward a more politically equitable world. Even before its passage, the “Face the Corruption” campaign served to inform students from all corners of campus, regardless of political ideologies, of the corrupting influence of money in politics and the relevance of the referendum. The process of passing the referendum was an opportunity for students who otherwise may have not heard of Citizens United to connect that ruling (as well as the broader issue of money in politics) to the integrity of our democracy and public education. It is especially important for these conversations to occur on college campuses, because public education and research are crucial pieces of any meaningful democracy. It is precisely our democracy — compromised by powerful interests’ dominating presence in campaign financing — that undermines students’ voices to advocate for sound public education institutions.

The movement to close the gap between the weight of the public voice and that of powerful interests in political funding has emerged. It will continue to grow as conversations surrounding the corrupting influence of money in politics spread among the young people that will inherit, shape and restore our nation’s democracy. I’m proud that our student body passed the People’s Right referendum. Its passage gives new meaning to our university’s proud history of radicalism in movements for positive social change.

Liz Fairweather is a recent UC Berkeley graduate.

The post Rootstriking the problem appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Charlotte Passot/Staff

UC Berkeley students are on the verge of achieving a dream decades in the making. On May 7, Berkeley City Council chose to narrow the field of submitted redistricting proposals from seven to two — one of which was proposed by the Berkeley Student District Campaign. Established three years ago with the sole purpose of engaging students and the wider Berkeley community in an effort to secure a city council district for students, the campaign is now closer than ever to succeeding in institutionalizing the dialogue between the city and the student community.

The map that the campaign submitted takes District 7 and turns it into a student supermajority district complete with 12,000 students — or 86 percent of the district. Students from all walks of life and all types of living are included in the district, meaning that the diverse student voice will be heard on the council in all its complexity. We are confident that by uniting students into one district, any representative elected from this district will have to answer to student issues like safety, Telegraph development and affordable housing.

The map does not only benefit students, though. Previously divided neighborhoods such as Bateman, Monterey Market and Willard are reunited on our map. Additionally, each district is as close to equal population as possible, with each district deviating from the equal population target of 14,073 by less than 1 percent. Our map was only one of two to achieve that level of adherence to the concept of “one person, one vote.”
For those who attended the council meeting on May 7, the necessity of such enhanced dialogue could not have been more apparent. For example, City Councilmember Susan Wengraf suggested moving the second public hearing on redistricting, scheduled to take place on July 2, to a time when students will not be on summer break. This proposal, a seemingly common-sense idea aimed at having a more inclusive dialogue about redistricting, was met with skepticism by fellow council members who apparently did not see the irony in holding a hearing at a time when the only community actively engaged in this process since day one (50 attendees at the May 7 meeting were students) cannot attend.

While we are closer to achieving our goal than ever, we are by no means done. Our map being selected as part of the final two is a great success for students. Having said that, though, the other map selected, the supposed “Simplicity” map, is, in fact an affront to the notion of a student district, and the very fact that it was selected shows that there is still work to be done. While media outlets such as Berkeleyside and The Daily Californian have advertised this map as containing a student district, the map’s submitter, Eric Panzer, himself has conceded that he sacrificed the notion of protecting communities of interest in favor of drawing cleaner lines. Every single crucial student living community, such as Greek housing, residence halls, apartments and co-ops is callously divided in the Simplicity proposal. This type of incomplete, slap-dash student district will not ensure that student issues are addressed on the city level. Not only is the student community divided, however — more nonstudents are included in this district than in the Berkeley Student District Campaign’s proposal, a fact that calls into question the ability of supporters of this map to claim that it contains a student district. Given that the Simplicity map’s submitter has endorsed the Berkeley Student District Campaign’s plan, what constituency would the council be appeasing by adopting this map? The student community and those interested in preserving communities of interest have resoundingly and forcefully said no to the Simplicity map and yes to the Berkeley Student District Campaign’s proposal.
For the council to adopt the Simplicity map — namely, its vastly inferior District 7 — would be a tacit admission that it does not support the notion of a student district. By splitting up the student community, the council will be silencing us for another decade to come. That is far too long to wait. The time for a student district is now.

Noah Efron is the ASUC redistricting director.

The post Cal students need a voice appeared first on The Daily Californian.

In this case, former ASUC president Connor Landgraf made an executive order to put the health and wellness referendum, which aimed to fund the establishment of new gyms and mental health services around campus by raising student fees, on the ballot. Landgraf’s March 24 executive order missed the constitutionally mandated deadline for using that method to submit a referendum by one week, putting the legislation on the ballot just 18 days before the election began. A petition was then filed against Landgraf’s order after the referendum had been voted on and the election had ended.

The deadlines restricting when legislation can be placed on the ballot exist so students are given enough time to review what they are voting on prior to the election. It is with this in mind that we support the ASUC Judicial Council’s decision to nullify the referendum.
We agree with Judicial Council’s reasoning that the use of an executive order needs to be the only way to solve a problem facing the student government. According to the council’s findings, Landgraf had a week to pass his language through the senate after receiving approval for it from UCOP but failed to complete this process in a timely manner.

No student on campus should be allowed to bypass the general procedure in order to place a referendum on the ballot simply because he or she missed a deadline.  In this case, Landgraf’s use of the order was an overreach of authority.

According to ASUC bylaws, the president is only allowed to use the executive order if the action is “urgent and necessary to maintain the functioning of the A.S.U.C. until the Senate can again meet.”  When Landgraf first issued this executive order, we were not convinced of its urgent necessity. We are still not convinced that the referendum’s goal — to reduce overcrowding of the RSF and increase health facilities — is vital to the immediate functioning of the student government.

Additionally, by missing the deadline, Landgraf gave students just two weeks before the election to review what the referendum entailed. If passed, the measure would have broad implications, increasing student fees by regular intervals until almost 2046, affecting generations of students for years to come.
If Landgraf had submitted the paperwork on time, more students might have had the chance to read the referendum’s language before voting on it.

The health and wellness referendum is a worthwhile cause  and its future impact should not be discounted. The referendum should be reviewed again by the student body, and we appreciate that it has already been placed on the 2014 ballot to allow for that consideration ahead of time.
If Landgraf had followed the rules to get the referendum placed on the ballot on time and students still voted to support it, there would be no question about the legitimacy of that vote. The Judicial Council made the right choice.

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