Once the undergraduate student government appoints members to the Office Space Allocation Committee, it will perform quarterly audits of Kerckhoff Hall office spaces according to guideline changes approved last Tuesday.
By a vote of 10-2, the Undergraduate Students Associated Council voted to approve the contents of the proposal, which states, among other things, that OSAC will notify groups before audits and “space misuse may also result in the revocation of the group’s allocation and removal from their office.”
Community Service Commissioner Valerie Sien, a member of the Constitutional Review Committee that recommended the changes, said previous OSAC guidelines made the threats of expulsion but the new quarterly office space sweeps would actually enforce them.
“It keeps groups on their toes,” she said.
The audit procedure will be determined once the OSAC committee is formed, Sien added.
The Constitutional Review Committee, composed of Sien, Internal Vice President Evan Shulman and Facilities Commissioner Galen Roth, unanimously recommended the changes to councilmembers prior to their meeting.
Roth cited at least three complaints to her office about defunct student groups who were supposedly using their office spaces for large-scale storage.
Due to the limited amount of office space in Kerckhoff Hall, Roth said any case of misuse was a serious offense worth changing guidelines for.
“A group not using office space for a two-year allocation period is another group not given a two-year allocation,” Roth said.
The Iranian Student Group, for example, officially shares their office, located on the third-floor of Kerckhoff Hall, with Raza Women and Chicanos for Community Medicine.
But Yasi Chehroudi, chair of the Iranian group, said the women’s organization ceased activity at least two years ago, and trash was accumulating in its third of the office.
The actual implementation of these new laws, however, is nebulous. The law allocates responsibility to OSAC to perform these sweeps, but the committee has yet to be formed, delayed by the Student Judicial Board case earlier this year.
Councilmembers expressed optimistic yet vague statements on how soon the new guidelines will be enacted and the OSAC committee formed.
“Hopefully, very soon,” Sien said.
USAC President Homaira Hosseini, responsible for selecting an OSAC chair, said she had a person in mind and was waiting for USAC bylaws changes to be approved by the council before making the appointment, hopefully by the end of the quarter.
General Representative Natalie Gonzalez, one of two Bruins United dissenting voters on the guidelines, said she voted no because no committee has been formed to perform the sweeps.
“Because of the controversial nature of the committee itself, I think that when OSAC operates independently in a nonpartisan way, it’s easier for things to get done,” she said.
Other changes in the guidelines include requiring groups to be registered with the Center for Student Programming from three to five years and placing greater weight in the allocation process on stability and the history of the group.
“Placing such an emphasis on history and limiting student groups who are starting to establish themselves doesn’t give them access to office space,” Gonzales said.