Senators chosen in USG special election
Students cast 987 votes, up from the 674 votes cast in the prior special election.
By SEAN CAMPBELL
The Undergraduate Student Government announced Ali Bhatti and John Breitfelder as senators-elect Tuesday night after a special election that took place from Sept. 18-20.
USG chief justice Susanna Andryan announced that during the voting period, students cast 987 votes — about 4.7% of the undergraduate population — up from the 674 cast in the last special election in November 2023.
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Jennifer Nehrer / Daily Trojan
Bhatti and Breitfelder, who received 235 and 177 votes respectively — for 24% and 18% of the total votes cast — were among 10 candidates that remained after one candidate, Tanisha Saraff, was disqualified for disregarding sanctions she received for election rule violations.
Now that he is elected, Bhatti, a former Birnkrant Community Council vice president and a sophomore majoring in business administration, said his top priority is to bring a Raising Cane’s fast food restaurant to campus.
“I’m from Tennessee. I haven’t had Cane’s that many times,” Bhatti said after the meeting. “When I came to California, I had Cane’s for the first time. It was amazing, and we need a Cane’s closer to campus.”
Breitfelder, a sophomore majoring in business administration, said his top priority is creating a program to offer transportation with Waymo’s self-driving cars. He also said he wants to work on a streamlined Recognized Student Organization proposal and recognition process, getting more late-night food near or on campus and improving electric scooter accessibility.
Both candidates said they wanted to work to create new pickleball spaces on campus after the courts adjacent to the Jefferson Boulevard Parking Structure permanently closed Sept. 16.
“I love to play pickleball, my roommates love to play pickleball … we just want a solution for that,” Breitfelder said after the meeting. “It’s a real need on campus.”
During the meeting, chief programming officer Hunter Black presented Senate Bill 144-08, which would amend the programming department bylaws to institute a more rigorous process for approval of new programming assemblies.
If passed, the bill would force all proposed assemblies to pass a majority vote by the USG executive cabinet excluding the chief programming officer.
The assembly would need to show how it represents an underrepresented student community or identity, demonstrate a lack of sufficient resources or support currently on campus and explain how its mission differs from existing USG programming assemblies.
This process would be in addition to the existing process that includes a two-thirds vote of confidence by USG’s programming assemblies, a signature-gathering process, a senate vote and the establishment of a trial period.
“The reason for the change is because … we feel that [the current process] is not reflective of the programming department’s voice,” Black said. “Becoming an assembly is a rigorous process, and so we need to make sure that whichever group is petitioned to become an assembly, they feel that they have the knowledge and the equipment behind it to go forward.”
Senators Brandon Tavakoli, Jeremiah Boisrond and Dane Sprague voiced concerns over the language of the bill, but vice president Brianna Sánchez directed the senators to have individual conversations with Black because only clarifying questions about the bill were allowed during the meeting.
Boisrond asked whether the executive cabinet’s votes would be revealed due to that aspect not being directly expressed in the bill’s language. In response, Black said that an amendment to the bill to make the voting public would be added.
Sprague asked if the specification that an assembly had to represent an underrepresented student community or identity would leave out current assemblies like the Political Student Assembly and the Environmental Student Assembly. Black said that both of those assemblies, under his opinion, would still qualify under the new language.
“When it comes to an interest-based thing, [an interest] can also be proven to be underrepresented within the student body as well,” Black said. “It just has to be demonstrated within that letter.”
Senate Bill 144-08, which would amend the programming department bylaws to institute a more rigorous process for approval of new programming assemblies. (Braden Dawson / Daily Trojan)
Tavakoli asked if the bill’s language allowed a presidential candidate to campaign on barring the applications of any new assemblies, despite merits, in order to gain the support of existing assemblies.
Black said the executive cabinet could do this based on the current bill but it would have to provide a reason and the proposed assembly could apply again.
In her report, speaker of the senate Diana Carpio talked about her goals for the year including increasing transparency in the RSO approval process.
“[Campus Activities has] still not claimed public accountability for what happened, so our goals have been to increase more [sic] transparency,” Carpio said. “We want to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
As a part of that process, Carpio met with Naddia Palacios, USC’s senior associate vice provost for student life, and Vice President for Student Life Monique Allard. Carpio said in the meeting she learned that the process should have less problems in the future due to templates being established and revised.
Carpio also said the spring Involvement Fair will occur normally, the rolling application review is currently underway for applications submitted from Aug. 28-29 and that information on new RSO applications will be released after Fall Break.
USG chief of staff Sofia Coen announced a new recurring town hall event that will give students the opportunity to directly interact with USG’s executive cabinet. The first iteration is scheduled for Oct. 29.
The senate also heard reports from chief diversity officer Yasmeen ElFarra about efforts to add “belonging” to USG’s current goals of diversity, equity and inclusion, Black about upcoming programming events and chief communications officer Faiz Ahmed about updating the USG website with a more active newsroom page.
Senator Heydy Vasquez presented on implementation of a diversity, equity and inclusion survey in USG and the establishment of a Buddhist space on campus.
Disclaimer: Heydy Vasquez is an opinion columnist at the Daily Trojan. She is not involved in any coverage of USG meetings.
Nicholas Corral contributed to this report.
