Thursday, January 9, 1997
POLITICS:
Choice preserves integrity of student governmentBy Telly Tse
It is easy to criticize USAC, especially when many feel that it
has tremendously wronged students by overturning a decision made by
another branch of student government. Hearing the words
"overturning," "abuse of power" and similar negative phrases makes
it easy for everyone to dismiss this as just another example of
blatant disregard for the students of UCLA.
Except that it is not so simple. Sometimes, in order to preserve
the integrity and dignity of an entity such as student government,
its members have to make decisions that superficially may not
adhere to common sense but in reality are prudent choices. Anyone
who has ever taken a U.S. political science course knows how
government functions and how sometimes it simply isn’t as easy as
one thinks to balance the budget, pass legislation or carry out new
laws. In the example of Ellis vs. USAC, the issue was not the
grievances of one student against our student government; the issue
was whether a judiciary body (the Judicial Board) had the right to
rule on something not provided for in the constitution.
When you think about it, to let this error pass could have led
to a dangerous precedent. Letting the J-Board make decisions
outside of the document it answers to opens up a whole new realm of
possibilities, most of which would be destructive to the
functioning of student government.
In simple terms, this whole series of events can be compared to
the following analogy: A person sues an organization for $500 as
well as a written apology for whatever grievances he or she has.
The judge rules in favor of the person. The organization is paid
the $500, receives the apology and is forced to relocate to
Anchorage, Alaska for the next 10 years.
This ruling is ludicrous NOT because it decides to send the
organization to Alaska, but because it believes that is has the
power to. If it were possible for another entity to simply overturn
the third condition and allow the person to get the money and
apology, that would be fine. But because the ruling must be kept
together, the person gets nothing.
And so because the case heard by the J-Board was like this (it
ruled in favor of Jeff Ellis but also made a decision on something
not in the USAC constitution), the entire decision was overturned
by 3/4 of the undergraduate council. Because the J-Board was seen
to have stepped out of bounds, it inadvertently sabotaged the
person it was trying to help  Jeff Ellis.
There is something more importantly here that just USAC,
government and politics. This is a lesson to all of us that
perception can be a dangerous thing. The student government made a
decision that it knew could be looked upon as wrong. But it was
made to preserve the integrity of the council. Of this, there
cannot be any doubt.
Like Ellis, I believe that our student government MUST answer to
the students it represents. But unlike Ellis, I did attend the
meeting in which this difficult decision was rendered. And if he
had done the same, I am sure his outlook would be different. The
council, in order to answer to the people, made the right decision
 the only decision it could have made.