An ASUC jargon encyclopedia and the campus enrollment lawsuit were among the topics discussed in Wednesday’s weekly ASUC meeting.
During the meeting’s executive officer reports, ASUC President Chaka Tellem announced plans to launch an ASUC “acronym decodifier.” According to Tellem, the decodifier will be a dictionary of acronyms and jargon frequently used in official ASUC business. Tellem said the decodifier, in the form of a spreadsheet, will make the ASUC more transparent to those unfamiliar with some of its procedural language.
Tellem also announced plans to launch an ASUC officials guide before next week’s ASUC meeting. The guide will describe the responsibilities of specific elected positions within the ASUC. Tellem said he hopes this guide will encourage students who are unfamiliar with the ASUC to participate in it.
“The whole purpose of us doing this is to make the ASUC more accessible for folks who are not in it,” Tellem said at the meeting. “We want to help open up the ASUC.”
ASUC Academic Affairs Vice President James Weichert provided an update to the ongoing enrollment lawsuit surrounding UC Berkeley’s student population. According to Weichert, the California Supreme Court will be meeting “within the next few days” to decide if campus will be required to reduce admissions by about 3,000 students for the next admissions cycle.
Admissions decisions are going to be sent to prospective students in less than a month, Weichert noted. With the lawsuit potentially limiting the number of students, Weichert expressed concern over what the ASUC can do at this time.
“It’s really scary,” Weichert said. “We are close to that deadline and we still don’t know what we’re gonna do.”
The lawsuit’s potential impact on UC Berkeley’s budget has resulted in campus’s budget cycle being delayed by two to four weeks, Weichert added.
Weichert noted that he and Tellem have been planning for possible strategies with campus no matter the outcome of the California Supreme Court decision.