The Senate also passed bills to make their meetings run more efficiently at Oct. 13 meeting
By SONORA SLATER — campus@theaggie.org
The meeting was called to order at 6:10 p.m. by Vice President JT Eden. He then read the UC Davis Land Acknowledgement and called roll.
The Judicial Council chair confirmation was the first item on the agenda for the night but was pushed to a later date to allow more time to complete the hiring process, including interviews.
Next was a period for public comments. Senator Stephen Fujimoto congratulated UC Davis graduate students for voting to join other UC campuses in the process of approving a UC-wide strike authorization vote.
“They’ve been pushing for living wages, transportation subsidies and better benefits,” Senator Fujimoto said. “If the unions do authorize a strike, I urge my fellow ASUCD members to stand in solidarity and push administrators to bargain with them fairly.”
Elected officials then gave reports on their activities for the week, including meetings, interviews for new committee members, office hours and more.
The Senate moved into quarterly reports, beginning with a report from The Pantry given by unit director and fourth-year human development major Abigail Nonnarath.
According to Nonnarath, The Pantry currently has around 115 volunteers, which it hopes to grow to around 150 throughout the quarter. Other goals for the fall include increasing their inventory of culturally diverse foods, labeling foods with nutrition information and expanding their refillable spice jar program.
In addition, Nonnarath said that they are working with UC Davis Stores in order to potentially offer scantrons and blue books to students in addition to their usual food items.
They are also in the process of moving their website to a new platform, potentially moving their general operations from inside the Memorial Union to being near Gunrock Gaming and putting together a “mobile pantry” cart where students can pick up Pantry food orders at the Silo.
“I don’t know if you all knew how much work Abigail puts into The Pantry,” Senator Radhika Gawde said following the presentation. “I hope you have some indication of it now.”
Fourth-year political science major and General Manager of KDVS Cate Hatcher then gave the radio station’s quarterly report.
According to Hatcher, the station trained 20 DJs over the summer, hosted three live music events and had 94 student attendees at their recent DJ training info sessions. During the rest of fall quarter, they hope to train around 30 more radio DJs, run their fall fundraiser, solidify plans for the station’s move to a new location on campus and complete repairs to their currently broken broadcast tower controller.
Hatcher said that in addition to difficulties with the tower taking them off the air, KDVS has struggled with unreliable internet in their current location of Lower Freeborn Hall.
“It essentially nullifies everything we’re doing down there,” Hatcher said. “That’s one of the reasons we’re so excited to move, but for now it’s kind of a basic needs issue that isn’t being met. It’s not as much fun to be a radio DJ when no one can listen to you.”
Although plans are now in place to fix the controller by the end of the month, it has been broken since mid-September, and Hatcher said that their organization is concerned about the damage this nearly month-long gap of being off-the-air could have on their listener base and credibility.
Following Hatcher’s report, third-year economics major Jesse Goodman, this year’s Picnic Day Chair, gave the Picnic Day quarterly report, expressing excitement for next spring’s event.
“I think we have a lot of momentum coming off of a great Picnic Day last year,” Goodman said.
According to Goodman, the event team is still in the process of hiring, so he didn’t have much to report yet, but he did mention plans to problem-solve issues related to the Doxie Derby in the coming year. Due to an excess of demand for the event, the U Center couldn’t accommodate the large crowds in 2022, leading Goodman to suggest a ticketed, albeit still likely free, approach in order to maintain more control over the number of attendees.
The Senate then took a break and was called back to order at 7:34 p.m., at which time they reviewed the status of past legislation before moving into the consideration of old legislation.
SB #6, which seeks to streamline the placing of “noncontroversial” ASUCD Senate bills on the Consent Calendar in order to increase the efficiency of Senate meetings, passed unanimously.
SB #7, which, in the case of a Senate meeting exceeding five hours in length, allows elected officer reporters to be submitted via writing rather than verbally, passed unanimously.
SB #8 allows members of the public to submit written comments in advance of a meeting of the ASUCD Senate. After discussing concerns about how to facilitate submissions and how to respond to public comments submitted virtually, amendments were made to the bill and it was then passed unanimously.
CA #77 moves elections of the ASUCD Transfer Student Representative and the International Student Representative from fall quarter to spring quarter. There was a unanimous vote, and the decision is now on the ballot for this year’s fall quarter elections.
CA #78 moves the election of the External Affairs Vice President from fall quarter to spring quarter. There was a unanimous vote, and the decision is now on the ballot for this year’s fall quarter elections.
SB #13, which allocated $635 to the ASUCD CoHo for the purpose of hosting ASUCD-sponsored drag show ‘Java and Drag,’ passed unanimously.
The Senate approved past meeting minutes, and the meeting was adjourned at 8:39 p.m., nearly two hours ahead of schedule.
Written by: Sonora Slater — campus@theaggie.org
