The Undergraduate Students Association Council decided to table
a discussion to amend its guiding documents at its general meeting
Tuesday night.
With a 9-0-2 vote, USAC opted to wait until further information
could be gathered regarding opening up the funding process to
independent. Independent groups are groups that are religiously or
politically based. Further discussion about the amendment will be
postponed until the beginning of winter quarter at the latest.
According to current USAC bylaws, council can only fund
Officially Recognized Student Organizations ““ student groups
that are registered with the Center for Student Programming and are
not religiously or politically oriented.
Proposed by General Representative Josh Lawson, the amendment
would allow any student group registered with the CSP to apply for
USAC funding, which comes from mandatory student fees.
But most of council, including administrative representatives
and USAC finance advisers, believed council should wait until the
University of California Office of the President updated its own
guidelines.
UCOP has been in the process of updating its guidelines since
1999, when the Supreme Court ruled that a student government could
not give or deny funding based on a student group’s
viewpoint.
In a short presentation, Brian Neesby, Lawson’s chief of
staff, expressed why Lawson’s office believes the bylaws
should be altered immediately.
“Right now, we are funding political and ideological
speech,” Neesby said, referring specifically to the recent
funding of a “No on Prop. 54″ campaign before the
recall election. USAC allocated $400 to the Asian Pacific Coalition
to advocate against the measure. Proposition 54, which would have
banned the state from collecting most race-based data, failed by a
large margin earlier this month.
There’s no reason not to fund political or religious based
groups, Neesby continued, and even warned that council is subject
to litigation.
But External Vice President Matt Kaczmarek contested that
council should be more cautious and wait for the UCOP drafts to be
written and for the second rounds of discussion to take place later
this quarter.
Kaczmarek is the chief negotiator between the University of
California Student Association and UCOP in their discussion of
guideline updates.
Other than Lawson, the only other councilmember who supported an
immediate bylaw change was Financial Supports Commissioner Erica
Husse. Lawson said he believed the discussion was driven by
political motivations.
Husse said council should not be hesitant to make this
significant change because throughout USAC’s history, council
has never waited for other parties’ actions to determine
their own actions.