AS Student Senate update graphic PJ Heusted // AS Review
By PJ Heusted
The Associated Students Student Senate met on Wednesday, Mar. 10 for their ninth meeting of the 2020-21 academic year.
Black Student Organization Demand Updates
Senate Pro-tempore Sargun Handa said that the AS Executive Board’s federal lobbying trip is officially being abolished as part of the fulfillment of the second BSO demand.
VP for Governmental Affairs Nicole Ballard said that her and Director of Legislative Affairs Jude Ahmed are currently writing a letter to ask for full funding of an Ethnic Studies Institute with five to seven faculty members instead of only three.
Handa also said that the Academic Coordinating Commission [ACC] rejected Honors College proposal citing a lack of information, lack of input from stakeholders and a general feeling that the proposal was not ready in its current form.
Spring Elections Timeline
Ballard shared the current timeline for AS spring elections. The changed timeline reflects the decision to move senate elections to the spring to be held concurrently with board elections.
Candidate filing will occur from April 12 to April 30, campaigning will begin May 1 and elections will be held from May 10 to 14.
Ballard said that another major change to the timeline is the decision to wait to announce results until after the grievance process is completed to avoid confusion in the announcement(s) to students.
Elections Advisory Committee Charge and Charter
Handa shared the tracked changes to the Elections Advisory Committee’s charge and charter.
Major changes include adjusting the membership to allow for either a member of the board or the senate to serve on the committee, and adding a note that bars students running in AS elections from also serving on the committee at the same time.
New Grievance Model Proposal
Ballard presented her proposal for a new model to handle grievances and appeals during AS elections.
Ballard’s proposal involves three stages to the grievance process: filing, hearing and appealing. In the filing phase, a resident director [RD] and hired student coordinator will receive all grievances and create four ethics board panels each consisting of three randomly selected at-large students. These ethics board panels will then run the hearings for any grievances with the oversight of an RD and the student coordinator before they make their decisions. In the appealing phase, an appeals board panel will be created with five at-large students and Associate Dean for Student Support Services Michael Sledge as the chair. The RD, Sledge and student coordinator will not participate in any decision making and are only involved to oversee the panels.
Finance and Business Manage Raquel Vigil asked about a previous suggestion that was made to use an application through the Western Involvement Network to then appoint students instead of using a random selection of at-large students.
Ballard said that there were concerns about bias amongst students who self-select to be involved given that many committee applications come from students who are already connected to the AS, which is what they are trying to avoid in the creation of this proposal.
ACC and Religious Accommodations
ACC is working to more accurately define the phrase “reasonable accommodations” for students observing religious holidays.
The group updated the language in their definition that requires professors to allow for a 24 hour window before and after an activity or due date to provide students with additional flexibility.
At-large Senator Sameer Shorab pointed out potential problems with requiring students to give written notice in the first two weeks of the quarter about when holidays they will be observing take place. Shorab said that there are holidays that depend on the lunar cycle and students observing those holidays may not know when the exact date is during the first two weeks.
Handa said that she didn’t feel they had defined “reasonable accommodations” well enough yet and Senator for the College of the Environment Francis Neff agreed that it appeared they didn’t fully take on the task of defining the term or providing examples of these accommodations.