USG meeting rehashes old problems


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First on Tuesday’s agenda: elections. At Tuesday’s Senate meeting, Emiko Suzuki and Scott Hummel, co-directors of elections and recruitment for USG, said revisions to the elections code should be completed by the beginning of November.

With the problems of the previous election cycle in mind, the commission plans to clarify the code’s language and prevent similar issues.

“It’s not that the election was handled poorly last year. It’s that the elections code was written in such a way that it’s easy to abuse,” Hummel said.

Changes to the elections code resonate with many USG officials, who witnessed last year’s disqualification and reinstatement of presidential candidate Owen Caine and vice presidential candidate Maya Babla under allegations of improper solicitation.

“[USG President] Holden [Slusher] and I support this initiative 100 percent. I don’t want anyone to ever go through something like that because of a code that could be easily amended,” USG Vice President Ashlie Chan said of last year’s election cycle.

Second on Tuesday’s agenda: KSCR. As Suzuki and Hummel work to address last year’s election mishaps, USG’s financial officials and staff from KSCR are working to prevent the station’s funding problems from resurfacing.

KSCR is requesting $2,234 from the Senate to send some of its staff to the College Music Journal Marathon and Film Festival.

KSCR originally applied to USG’s Leadership Funding Board and was told it would be receiving the money, general manager Zachary Wolf said.

But because KSCR already receives funds through USG’s line item budget, the radio station is not eligible to apply for aid from any of the funding boards. After learning that the Leadership Fund would no longer be sponsoring their trip to the festival, KSCR now has to seek funding from the Senate allocations fund in order to comply with USG’s bylaws, Wolf said.

“It’s actually confusing at this point. I haven’t read the bylaws and I don’t know which bylaws they’re referring to, but it doesn’t seem like a malicious revocation of the funding,” Wolf said. “It just seems like an opportunity for explanation. From our standpoint, we don’t think there are going to be too many bumps in the road.”