The meeting took place over Zoom following a member of the Senate table testing positive for COVID-19
By ISABELLA KRZESNIAK — campus@theaggie.org
Internal Vice President Juliana Martinez Hernandez called the meeting to order at 6:14 p.m. and recited the UC Davis Land Acknowledgement. The meeting was held over Zoom after a member of the Senate table tested positive for COVID-19.
Disability Rights Advocacy Committee (DRAC) Chair Sarah Theubet nominated third-year pharmaceutical chemistry major Rima Vyas to become a member of the committee. One of Vyas’ goals as part of the committee is to work toward the full implementation of lecture capture.
“I think what’s important is making lecture capture available to all classes,” Vyas said. “I find it absurd how it hasn’t been implemented already.”
Vyas was confirmed.
The UC Davis chapter of the California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG), which aims to protect the environment and encourage civic participation, provided a presentation on its recent accomplishments and future goals. Representatives from the group discussed their Beyond Plastic campaign, which aims to reduce plastic use.
“We want to move beyond plastic by not producing plastic in the first place, and we’ve made a lot of progress on this,” said CALPIRG Representative Philip Mariam. “Our long term goal is to pass a ballot measure in August at the State Assembly to vote ‘Yes’ on our bill AB 2026. Overall, despite the organizational difficulties we’ve had this quarter, we’ve been successful.”
Representatives also discussed their pledge drive, where students support CALPIRG by paying a voluntary $10 fee every quarter. They received around 2000 pledges.
They also discussed their intent to canvas for their Save The Bees campaign, which aims to ban pesticides that are harmful to bees. The group also seeks to increase voter registration through their New Voters Project.
Additionally, they discussed their Make Textbooks Affordable campaign. Their goal is to spur the UC Regents to pass an open textbooks grant, where students could reduce the amount of money they are spending on textbooks. CALPIRG would like to host a roundtable discussion with students of different majors to discuss textbook costs.
Martinez Hernandez then moved to approve minutes from the previous Senate meeting.
Next, the table moved into a discussion of new legislation. SR #32, authored by Senator Owen Krauss, was introduced. The resolution calls on the university to allocate funding currently being used for the “design and fabrication of parts and systems for earth-propelled nuclear weapons systems” to environmentally-beneficial research. The measure was amended and passed on May 22.
Martinez Hernandez adjourned the meeting at 7:03 p.m.
Written by: Isabella Krzesniak — campus@theaggie.org
