Senators hear State of USG address, amend bylaws

Undergraduate Student Government president Brianna Sánchez gave her State of USG Address to the senate Tuesday night before senators approved three bills and heard three bylaw amendments that will be eligible for voting next week. During the speech, Sánchez called the organization’s past year “challenging” and “tumultuous” but “intentional, impactful and transformative.”

“I choose to see [the past year] as the most transformative and impactful year of my life, because let’s be honest: If you can survive this, you can pretty much survive anything,” Sánchez said. 

Sánchez highlighted USG’s achievements during her tenure, including utilizing 100% of the budget, incorporating the Undocumented Trojan Success Assembly and allocating $55,000 to USC’s Immigration Clinic to assist in immigration filing fees for students.

Sánchez said USG members are the most selfless, passionate and dedicated people she knows, and they have helped meet USG’s goal of transparency.

“Each officer dedicates their time and energy to enhance the undergraduate experience in various meaningful ways,” Sánchez said. “While our approaches may differ, we all share a common mission of improving the student experience and that is truly commendable.”

Senator Jad Kilani and vice president Dane Sprague introduced senate bill 144-36, which would create a Muslim community advocacy liaison and outline the process for the nomination of any additional Office of Religious and Student Life advocacy liaisons. The outlined process states that Dean of Religious Life Varun Soni can nominate any additional advocacy liaisons in the future. 

The bill will enter a one-week grace period where it can be voted on during next Tuesday’s meeting, along with SB 144-30, which would establish a Jewish community advocacy liaison and recognize Jewish American Heritage Month.

Sprague said SB 144-36 opens up the opportunity for more “detailed, intentional and diverse” representation in USG.

“We’re going to call it a division of the advocacy department,” Sprague said. “It is going to be a diverse range of different advocacy liaisons.”

Leaders from the Environmental Student Assembly introduced SB 144-35, a resolution that called on USC to support the electrification of industrial boilers for cleaner air. 

ESA assistant executive director Ashley Halim said USC currently operates 21 boilers at University Park Campus and 14 at Health Sciences Campus, which emit a combined 390 million British Thermal Units of natural gas, worsen air quality and contribute to pollution. 

ESA director of advocacy Mia Moore-Walker said other universities, such as Stanford University and University of California Irvine, have already implemented plans to electrify their industrial boilers and said USC should follow suit.

“USC also made a statement saying that we would start the process of switching from gas to electric boilers, so this bill is holding [USC] to that commitment and making sure that they actually undertake it,” Moore-Walker said. 

During the meeting, senators unanimously passed SB 144-32, which amended the process to appeal judicial council rulings. The bill will create an appeals commission that would include five randomly selected members of USG — not a part of the judicial council, senate or executive cabinet — to avoid the judicial council investigating their own decisions.

During the last USG election, senatorial candidate Mason Yonover appealed the judicial council’s decision to disqualify him from the senatorial race. The judicial council then investigated themselves and found themselves not guilty. 

The senate also unanimously approved SB 144-34, which amended the bylaws to increase transparency in the bylaws amendment process. The bill requires that the executive cabinet and judicial council votes be shared on the USG website for the public to see.

Chief of staff Sofia Coen introduced SB 144-37 and 144-38, which will amend the USG constitution, office policy manual and bylaws to fix grammar mistakes and unclear words. Both bills entered a one-week grace period and will be eligible to be voted on at the final senate meeting of the semester April 29.

During his report, speaker of the senate Elija Barnes highlighted the 30 senate projects that were worked on this semester — 15 of which were completed — such as president-elect and current senator Mikaela Bautista’s Sex Week initiative and senator Jackalyn Karamanougian’s Leavey Library accessibility seating project. 

“One of the main strengths of [this] senate class has been not only collaborating internally within senate, but also making sure that we are doing intentional collaboration with others outside of the senate class in order to make sure that senate is ultimately representing and impacting as many students as possible,” Barnes said. 

During the meeting, senator Sydney White said all her projects will continue into the next year, such as her move-out flea project, Black History Month banner art and international festival project. 

The vote to remove Barnes, which was originally scheduled for after the meeting, was postponed because senators “intentionally left,” meaning the senate did not meet the minimum number of people required to vote, Sánchez wrote in a statement to the Daily Trojan.