In his speech, Ojeda discussed both the challenges and successes from this academic year and announced that he will not be running for re-election

By RODRIGO VILLEGAS — campus@theaggie.org 

Senator Trinity Chow called the meeting to order at 6:12 p.m. and read the UC Davis Land Acknowledgement to commence the meeting.

The Senate then held several rounds of committee position and member confirmations for the Housing and Transportation Advocacy Committee (HTAC) and the Student Health and Wellness Committee (SHAWC). Each nominee introduced themself and answered various questions from the Senate regarding their respective positions. 

ASUCD President Francisco Ojeda then gave a State of the Association.

Ojeda began his speech by mentioning the impeachment through his presentation’s title slide, where he wrote “By: (STILL) ASUCD President,” and directly addressed it. 

“Thankfully, we were able to get back to work after the annoying and wasteful impeachment,” Ojeda said. “I hope, for the sake of the association and our mental health, we have moved on.”

He proceeded with his speech, where he discussed the new campus-wide accounting system implemented on Jan. 1, which has become a significant issue that has affected the entire association. The new system came with bugs that have caused delays in purchases within its units, and other campus departments are also struggling to understand the new system, according to Ojeda. However, he assured the Senate that the ASUCD HeadQuarters (HQ) office is actively working to better understand the system. 

He continued, highlighting other challenges ASUCD has faced, like finding storage and office space for Aggie Reuse, as well as successes, such as Planet Her, Housing Week and the Entertainment Council (EC)’s recent Brain Freeze concert. Additionally, he previewed events for the spring quarter, like Lawntopia. 

“I hear [the Entertainment Council] is competing with us, since we are holding budget hearings on the same day,” Ojeda said. “I hope they get lucky and have some five students join their concert, while the rest of the 30,000 undergrads hear budget hearings with us.”

He eventually transitioned to discussing ASUCD spring elections, mentioning that he is drafting a mass communication email to be sent on the first day of elections. Furthermore, he stated that he will not be running for re-election. 

Lastly, he ended his speech with one final statement before proceeding to thank everyone for their work. 

“I would like to end by saying that during the impeachment weeks, most of you were fortunate enough to be able to mark those as work hours and get paid for it,” Ojeda said. “Meanwhile, I was tasked with doing my job in addition to the impeachment hearings, with no pay at all. For those who were fortunate enough to receive that money, that’s what I call ‘good business.’”

Since Ojeda had to leave early, the Senate skipped over the questions for him.

Next, the Senate moved into public comments. The first comment criticized the Senate for their disorganization, pointing out their failure to publish the meeting agendas online and to correctly assign meeting minutes to the appropriate folder in Google Drive. 

The second comment advised senators to consider reallocating funds from the Office of the Transfer Student Representative and the Office of the International Student Representative to The Pantry next quarter. 

Afterward, Chow notified the Senate of her plans to introduce bills next quarter that impact how Senate meetings are conducted. 

“They are rough ideas right now,” Chow said. “Essentially, the goal is to make the Senate run smoother, faster, get people home earlier and be more transparent in general.”

The meeting then moved into a break.  

Once the meeting resumed, the Senate moved into the consideration of old legislation. 

The table started with a review of SB #50, a bill that allocates $751.54 to the Office of Senator Nur Ambaw to purchase athletic gear for the Memorial Union. However, Senator Nur Ambaw ultimately chose to withdraw the bill to give himself time to adjust the language of the bill and because he was not present for the meeting. 

Then they transitioned to SB #68, a bill to establish the Planet Her Committee as a committee under the Gender and Sexuality Commission.

Senator Jonathan Ng initiated a long discussion by stating his concern with the bill. 

“I talked to other UCs about how they run festivals like [Planet Her], and they told me that it’s all run through their entertainment board, and they allocate the budget to said entertainment board,” Ng said. “We create committees, then subcommittees and we go on and on. I don’t think that’s the direction we should be heading in when it comes to events.”

After a long discussion surrounding the bill, SB #68 passed. 

The Senate then considered SB #69, a bill to allocate $2,849.66 to the Pride Festival Unit for Drag Brunch, and SB #70, a bill to reform the violation point assessment and issuance process of candidates during ASUCD election, and both bills subsequently passed. 

The meeting then transitioned to a review of written reports before eventually moving to an open forum. During the open forum, a member of the public expressed their disappointment with a particular pastry sold at the CoHo. 

“I’m here to talk about cinnamon rolls,” the member said. “I’m coming to you all, as the big people on campus, to ask if you could transition from the cream cheese icing to something more vanilla-based, for the sake of the community.”

After a quick, lighthearted discussion, the meeting adjourned at 10:35 p.m.

Written by: Rodrigo Villegas — campus@theaggie.org

The bill aims to make rules regarding ASUCD campaign financing more clear and efficient to increase voter turnout

By RIVERS STOUT — campus@theaggie.com

On Feb. 22, the ASUCD Senate amended and passed SB #55 after a lengthy debate between the senators. The bill was authored by Zachary Boggeln, the vice chairperson of the Internal Affairs Commission (IAC) to ensure that elections are “more transparent, equitable and efficient,” according to the language of the bill. 

The goal of the bill is to make elections more fair for running candidates who don’t have connections willing to give them significant donations.

“I [have] served on the elections committee for a year now,” Boggeln said. “I’ve also been one of four committee members to assess violation reports where fraud is suspected [in ASUCD elections], or if there is any reason to believe that any candidate or campaign at any point violated the rules that the association has set for a campaign.”

Boggeln described multiple reasons for the bill’s writing, including difficulties investigating possible instances of expenditure fraud or poor finance management in running senators’ campaigns. 

“The trouble was, and still is, that the expenditure reports are due immediately after the voting cycle has ended [on Friday night],” Boggeln said. “The elections committee has until Sunday at midnight to release the results.”

Within that two-day period, the committee has to go through all campaign expenditure forms and ensure that the campaigns followed the guidelines placed. This can be a tedious process, and to investigate an election with suspicious expenditures can be time consuming. 

“There was a problem with one campaign in which we couldn’t identify the source of the materials that were donated,” Boggeln said. “SB #55 was written to make that process easier for the elections committee to investigate.”

Boggeln went on to explain that the ambiguously constructed rules around campaign finance were hard to interpret and effectively act on. His bill was ultimately a way to make the rules more concise, allowing for better action to be taken when expenditure fraud is suspected, while hopefully making it more difficult and less likely to be committed in the first place.

When it was to be voted on, the bill created a controversy in the Senate. With much of the Senate already gone, a few senators debated at length about the bill’s content with the morality of material donations and how they can create an uneven playing field. The bill originally banned all material donations out of fairness in the elections and ease for the IAC, however, the majority of the remaining senators eventually decided to allow material donations provided by students under $10, with receipts included. 

“I liked it as it stood,” Senator Curtis Chen said. “I was surprised that it was a contentious bill because in my opinion, everybody is on the same playing field. When I ran, I didn’t spend any money besides the poster paper, and I feel like I had a pretty successful cycle. It was a good regulation on the election process and I’m glad that it passed.”

Chen then spoke on the benefit of the bill limiting donations and how it will likely have a positive impact on the elections. 

“Having a monetary advantage on other candidates is just unfair,” Chen said. “It’s more similar to how the U.S. [elections] are, but we’re students, [and] I don’t think we should be winning based on how much money we put into elections. We should be winning based on our ideals and the communities we represent.”

Chen expressed that he was satisfied with the bill passing, regardless of the amendments made to it. 

Reported suspicions of campaign finance fraud or other violations come from student voters, according to Boggeln. However, voter turnout in the last few years has been low, with the fall 2023 election cycle hitting just below 16%. It is difficult for the IAC to investigate cases of potential fraud with low turnouts. 

“Voter turnout is one of the things I wish to improve this cycle,” the newly elected ASUCD Elections Officer Sriya Batchu said. “My goal is more advertising. [The goal is to] get the word out there to different parts of campus that might not be as aware of elections and may not have much overlap with ASUCD in general.” 

Batchu hopes to increase turnout by putting posters up around campus, increasing the online presence of the elections, utilizing raffles to increase awareness, tabling and asking that ASUCD events promote the elections.

“We’re trying to target freshmen, because I know that from when I was a freshman, they don’t know much about ASUCD,” Batchu said. “While I’m sure many of them are somewhat aware, they maybe don’t have one-on-one interaction.”

When asked if the Elections Committee would employ any new tactics to increase engagement, Batchu said that they are going to expand on the strategies they have already used.

“Every election has been a little bit better than the previous one, in my opinion,” Batchu said. “ I’m hoping that in this cycle we can focus on more advertising and getting out there more.”

While the IAC has existed for a long time, Batchu’s position of elections officer was recently created. Until now, it had been primarily focused on organizing the logistics of elections and didn’t prioritize increasing the election’s voter turnout. 

SB #55 was ultimately an effort to make the elections more grassroots and make the ASUCD Senate a better democracy, according to Boggeln.

“I think this bill is great not because it asks people to look for big donors, [but to] look for voting students and convince them that not only should they vote for them, but they should give them 10 dollars to vote for them,” Boggeln said. “I think that will incentivize candidates to work really hard to craft a platform to appeal to students that’s meaningful, and also provide an opportunity for really qualified candidates to run a campaign.”

Written by: Rivers Stout — campus@theaggie.org