ASUCD Senate meetings are scheduled to begin Thursdays at 6:10 p.m. Times listed are according to the clock at the Oct. 13, 2011 meeting location, the Memorial Union’s Coffee House. The ASUCD president is not required to attend senate meetings.

Meeting called to order at 6:10 p.m.

Adam Thongsavat, ASUCD president, present

Bree Rombi, ASUCD vice president, present

Yena Bae, ASUCD senator, present

Miguel Espinoza, ASUCD senator, present

Emmanuel Diaz-Ordaz, ASUCD senator, present

Andre Lee, ASUCD senator, present

Amy Martin, ASUCD senator, present

Mayra Martín, ASUCD senator, present

Tatiana Moana Bush, ASUCD senator, present

Darwin Moosavi, ASUCD senator, present

Matthew Provencher, ASUCD president pro-tempore, present

Brendan Repicky, ASUCD senator, present

Rebecca Sterling, ASUCD senator, present

Ryan Meyerhoff, ASUCD senator, present

Appointments and confirmations

Liam Burhe, Maggie Mei, Stephanie Johnson and Tiffany Lee were confirmed to the Academic Affairs Commission.

Emily Chen was confirmed to the Environmental Policy and Planning Commission.

Nicole Aiyoung, Farsam Fraz, Eric Will and Sabrina Diaz were confirmed to the Elections Committee.

Consideration of old legislation

Senate Bill 2, authored by Diaz-Ordaz, co-authored by Caitlin Alday, Alvarado, Anderson, Bush, Diaz-Ordaz, Espinoza, Gonzalez, Hernandez, Hubbard, Kindg, Martin, Montelongo, Pathak, Phan, Sekhon, Wren, Zabaleta, and Zepeda, introduced by Diaz-Ordaz to allocate $4,000 from Senate Reserves to Aggies of Color for the Student of Color Conference (S.o.C.C) being held Nov. 11 to 13, 2011. Both the External Affairs Commission and the Business and Finance Commission expressed concern about the high amount of revenue being asked for. A motion was placed to amend the amount of the grant to $2,500. After a heated discussion involving the public and the senators, the amended version of the bill passed with a 9-3 vote. Repicky, Sterling and Meyerhoff voted no.

Senate Bill 106, authored by Sergio Cano, introduced by Cano, to expand oversight of the ASUCD Elections Committee, was vetoed by President Thongsavat.

Senate Bill 107, authored by Cano, introduced by Cano, to address listserv usage in the Election Codes, was vetoed by President Thongsavat.

Meeting adjourned at 10:35 p.m.

Open positions within ASUCD can be found at vacancy.ucdavis.edu. CHARLOTTE YOUNG compiles the senate briefs. She can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.

On Oct. 11, the Solar Community Housing Association (SCHA) signed a license agreement with the university regarding the Domes, a UC Davis cooperative housing community.

Last school year, the university announced that it would not be renewing student leases for the Domes due to safety violations. After a long “Save the Domes” campaign, supporters of the Domes hope that this contract, which is the first form of written agreement between SCHA and the university, will lead to a five-year ground lease agreement between SCHA and the Domes.

“We’re not out of the woods yet, but we’re in the home stretch,” said SCHA project manager Ben Pearl in a statement. “We’re grateful for the university’s cooperation, and we look forward to working with the Davis community to re-open the Domes.”

Domes supporters hope that once the lease is signed they can begin renovations of the Domes to address the safety concerns. Supporters are planning a “Community Rebuild” from Nov. 3 through Nov. 6.

– Hannah Strumwasser

On Saturday, the UC Davis West Village held its grand opening ceremony.

The West Village community is the largest net-zero energy community in
the United States. The community will house approximately 6,000 people,
including UC Davis faculty and students. The Sacramento City College’s
UC Davis Center and the new university research center uHub will also be
housed at West Village.

“UC Davis West Village illustrates our
commitment to cutting-edge research in sustainability and the value and
impact of public-private partnerships,” said UC Davis Chancellor Linda
P.B. Katehi in a statement. “The success of these partnerships
demonstrates what can be achieved when innovations in design, science
and engineering come together for the public good.”

The event on Saturday included a ribbon cutting ceremony, an open house and speeches by university representatives.

– Hannah Strumwasser

It’s the beginning of the year, and the Associated Students of UC Davis (ASUCD), UC Davis’ student government, is gearing up for the upcoming school year. Similar to the United States government, ASUCD is made up of a legislative, judicial and executive branch. Within the legislative branch, there are commissions, groups of students who do specific work for the association. Along with planning events, commissions also see bills that are seen by the senate, and give the senators their opinions on the bills before they are voted on.

All commissions have 9 commissioners and 4 alternate commission members. Commissioners are hired at the end of Fall and Spring quarters, but there are sometimes mid-quarter openings for students who want to get involved. With more acronyms than the amount of cows in Davis, ASUCD can be confusing to new, and even older students. External Affairs CommissionThe External Affairs Commission (EAC) works to in corporate UC Davis into a larger community.

“The main goal of my commission is to bridge the gap between the association and all things external of it (mainly the City of Davis),” said Carly Sandstrom, EAC chair.

EAC helps put on events in order to combine the UC Davis community and city of Davis community, such as Music on the Green and Davis Neighbors Night Out. Sandstrom said that she hopes students will continue to attend these events and encourage relationships between students and the greater Davis community.

“So many people say they chose Davis because they loved the community it had, and there is no better way to keep that community alive by spreading the spirit to downtown, in class, and anywhere around town,” Sandstrom said.

Business and Finance Commission

The Business and Finance Commission, chaired by Brian Barnett, reviews legislation and handles internal audits of ASUCD units.  

“Audits enable us to develop direct working relationships with the units and allows us to look at their budget and their current operating model to see if it is reflecting the appropriations in the budget,” Barnett said. “This is really a great way for us to have a direct impact on other parts of the campus, by directly benefiting the services that students use everyday.”

Internal Affairs CommissionThe Internal Affairs Commission (IAC) works to regulate ASUCD policies and operations, according to Sergio Cano, IAC chair. IAC works to improve the functioning of ASUCD, and sometimes gives the senate their opinion on bills.

“Our Commission does not necessarily have a direct impact on this campus, however, we recommend policies for ASUCD that may directly affect the students. For example, Internal Affairs Commission oversees all (fee or policy) ballot initiative that the students may vote on,” Cano said.

Academic Affairs CommissionThe Academic Affairs Commission (AAC) works to increase communication between students and the senate table and between students and professors. “We serve as an advisory board to the ASUCD Senate on all academic matters at UCD. Our commission researches, recommends, and develops programs that improve academic life for the UC Davis campus,” said Annemarie Stone, chair of AAC.

Environmental Policy and Planning Commission

This commission is in charge of making sure that ASUCD and the UC Davis campus is environmentally savvy.

“The main function of our commission is to advise the senate on environmental policy, especially pertaining to pending senate legislation,” said Margaret Link, chair of Environmental Policy and Planning Commission (EPPC). EPPC also hosts Earth Week on campus, and works with other on-campus environmental groups to promote living green in Davis.

Gender and Sexualities Commission

“The Gender and Sexualities Commission works to increase awareness of issues that pertain to gender and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual communities which includes topics such as gender equity, more education surrounding transgender identities, consent, and support of queer communities on campus,” said Caitlin Alday, chair of GASC.

Like other commissions, GASC reviews ASUCD senate legislation that pertains to their commission.

“When any legislation is proposed to Senate which deals with or implicates gender, sexuality, sexual assault or harassment, it goes through our commission where we review it as a commission, suggest changes, and ultimately vote on it,” Alday said. 

Ethnic and Cultural Affairs

The Ethnic and Cultural Affairs Commission works to educate and inform UC Davis students and the senate table about underrepresented minorities.

“ECAC contributes to UC Davis primarily through distributing grants and working with ethnic student organizations that plan their own programs and that aim to create a positive racial climate on campus through such programs,” said Edd Montelongo, ECAC chair.

ECAC is currently working on the Students of Color Conference, a conference that will take place at UC Davis this November. The conference will consist of community discussions and workshops about race, ethnicity and gender.

All job openings for commissioners are posted on the ASUCD Jobs webpage, vacancy.ucdavis.edu.

HANNAH STRUMWASSER can be reached campus@theaggie.org.

Editor’s note: The section on the Ethnic and Cultural Affairs commission was not printed in the OCt. 17 issue of The Aggie. The Aggie regrets this error.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has given UC Davis a $4 million grant to establish a research to study the causes and effects of policies regarding poverty in the United States. Davis was chosen as one of three schools, along with Stanford University and University of Wisconsin-Madison, to host a center based solely on researching poverty in the United States.

“Being chosen to lead one of only three national poverty research centers in the country is a tremendous recognition of our faculty’s intellectual capacity, and of the excellence and multidisciplinary breadth of their research,” UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B.

Katehi said in a press release. “Their efforts will help to inform and guide research and public policy around this most urgent issue.”

As a part of the grant, the UC Davis Center for Poverty Research is to use some of the money to fund research at other institutions, as well as finance both undergraduate and graduate poverty studies and research.

The research center’s work will draw on the work of faculty, undergraduates and graduate students, in addition to creating a freshman seminar to encourage students to consider poverty research as a field of study.

“For UC Davis students, the center will lead to several new opportunities: expanded freshman seminar offerings relating to poverty, an upper division, interdisciplinary course (involving both undergraduate and graduate students) on poverty and additional seminars, conferences and events in which researchers from UC Davis and other universities present their research on poverty,” said Ann Stevens, chair of the economics department and director of the new center, in an e-mail interview.

The center’s goal is to not only improve the vastly growing poverty epidemic in the United States, but also to allow further advances in the area of poverty research as a whole.

“The center will have four main themes: labor markets and poverty, non-cash components of the safety net (particularly education and health policies), intergenerational transmission of inequality and immigration and poverty,” said Marianne Page, economics professor and deputy director of the center.

For students, the center will provide a plethora of opportunity for internships and classes to encourage poverty as a disciplinary field in various areas, including economics, sociology, psychology, political science, engineering, the school of law and the school of education.

However, additional construction will not occur on campus for the center.

“The center is beginning almost immediately,” Stevens said. “It is not a new physical center – though we will have some physical space soon, but rather a set of activities. An initial event is currently being planned for early November, and we hope to begin seminars and other events soon thereafter.”

The first event will be held on Nov. 7, where some of the faculty will be giving presentations about “Why Poverty Research Matters.”

CHARLOTTE YOUNG can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.