After a back-and-forth over Senate Resolution #4, senators grew annoyed over ASUCD President’s lack of action
By RODRIGO VILLEGAS — campus@theaggie.org
At 6:11 p.m., Senate President Pro Tempore JT Eden called the Nov. 9 Senate meeting to order. After roll call, he read the UC Davis Land Acknowledgement.
The meeting began with the CoHo quarterly report, presented by Foodservice Director with the Associated Students Dining Services Darin Schluep.
Schluep recently completed the CoHo’s participation in the Beverage Pouring Rights Industry Working Group.
“We voted to abstain from participating in that agreement moving forward,” Schluep said. “I appreciate the dialogue that I was able to have with all of you leading up to that vote, and I 100% support the decision and [I am] happy we went that direction.”
However, Schluep also cited the decision as a challenge because the CoHo’s transition away from the agreement includes a shift away from single-use plastic beverage bottles, which will change the beverage selection at their locations.
“[We] are gonna work with Student Housing… to unify our communication plan,” Schluep said. “We want to make sure that there’s a campus-wide message coming out along those lines, because it will be impactful — it’ll change what you see in our beverage coolers.”
Lastly, Schluep shared goals for the next quarter, which included a CoHo expansion.
“We’re very close to having a final design,” Schluep said. “This is for a pretty extensive patio on the west side of the Coffee House… providing better ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] access… and then the other part of the project is to expand the portfolio of our employee break area.”
The Whole Earth Festival (WEF) quarterly report followed.
Co-Director of WEF Olivia Hurley expressed their goal to create a more educationally enriching festival this year as they feel the festival has moved more toward a musical and crafts festival.
Next, Academic Affairs Commission (AAC) Chairperson Britney Cao gave the commission’s quarterly report.
Cao spoke on “Syllabus to Browser,” a project intended to remodel Schedule Builder to include professors’ syllabi so that students can look at the course syllabus before registering for a class. The AAC hopes to launch a pilot program in spring quarter 2024.
The meeting then moved into public comments, which saw a student condemn the internal vice president’s behavior during the Nov. 7 meeting with Chancellor May.
“Cutting off a Palestinian student while they were sharing their grievances with the chancellor and the university is completely unacceptable and contributes to decades of silencing Palestinians as they struggle for freedom,” fifth-year political science major Yara Kaadan said. “The position of being internal vice president does not grant you authority over how we grieve and how we express our concerns with this university or Chancellor May as an individual.”
Afterwards, Eden ordered a break.
Once everyone reconvened, the Senate moved into the status of previous legislation. SB #17, SB #18, and SB #20 were all passed and signed; SR #2 was passed and signed; and CA #87 and CA #88 were passed and signed.
The introduction of new legislation followed. SB #22 was referred to the Internal Affairs Commission (IAC) and the External Affairs Commission (EAC); SB #23 was referred to the IAC; SB #26 was referred to the IAC and the Ethnic and Cultural Affairs Commission; SR #3 was referred to the IAC and EAC and SB #27 was referred to the IAC.
Next, the consent calendar passed unanimously, and the Senate moved on to consider old legislation.
SB #24, a bill that allocates $1,709.53 for the ASUCD Transfer, International and Freshmen (TIF) Friendsgiving Mixer, passed unanimously.
SR #4, an ASUCD Senate Resolution that states the overarching goals, priorities and business strategies of ASUCD for this year, was considered. After much deliberation, and due to ASUCD President Francisco Ojeda’s absence, the Senate decided to postpone the consideration of SR #4.
After the Senate progressed through the remaining agenda items, they again arrived at the consideration of SR #4. This resolution has been considered in several Senate meetings since the beginning of the quarter.
After two votes (which was one to pass the bill and one to table it) ended in stalemates, several senators expressed their frustrations.
“I don’t think we need to give [President Ojeda] any more second chances,” Senator Dani Antonio said. “It’s week six — this is embarrassing. It’s supposed to be done by week one, we can’t keep giving second chances.”
Senator Binh Do agreed.
“Constantly waiting and relying on somebody else, this is the inaction that people are talking about,” Do said. “It’s time we take action [and] end this right now. Let’s not waste student time, student fees on this senate resolution.”
Ethnic and Cultural Affairs Chairperson Kristen Le went on.
“If we can’t even expect our president to write a resolution in six weeks, what is the point of making it better?” Le said. “We have given him so many chances… There needs to be some accountability at this point.”
A last roll call vote ended in a vote of 0-11-3 (yes, no, abstain) and SR #4 failed.
Eden adjourned the meeting at 8:50 p.m.
Written by: Rodrigo Villegas — campus@theaggie.org
