ASUCD Wednesday

[aggienaut]

   As before, I'm having the Vice Chiefs pretty much run things. At today's meeting: Justice Aguilera: "Hey how are you?" Me: "I don't have my laptop, I don't have an agenda, I don't have anything, its great not having to stress about that anymore!" ... a few minutes later Vice Chief Wheat comes in and asks me how I'm doing as well "I have no idea what we're going to talk about today, I'm not stressing about any of it.. I feel like I should be wearing a hawaiian shirt!" ... a few minutes later after some fidgeting "okay guys it actually freaks me the hell out, & thats why I keep talking about it!!"
   A few minutes later we learned that Wheat didn't know about the fake election. Justice Aguilera: "here vote on my laptop right now!" Me: "Isn't that a violation of elections rules?" Aguilera: "But I WANT to violate the rules of the fake election!" I was actually all for it too but Wheat said he preferred to just vote at home.
   Since both Justice Sraboyants & Justice Coady couldn't make it, we didn't make quorum. They will have to attend some other ASUCD meeting in the intervening week, due to our divinely inspired judicial directives, so expect them to show up somewhere. We talked about the ASUC Berkeley case Ratto v. Vakil anyway.
   Now in this case ASUC Berkeley Attorney-General Ratto alleges that Vakil, who had been the Defense council in the previous case, committed perjury when he said he thought chalking only lasted a day. Now at first glance one would think it would be pretty hard to prove how long someone thinks chalking lasts, but it turns out Vakil practically wrote the book on chalking. Other than numerous witnesses alleging he'd given them chalking advice, notes people had taken during his party's training retreat detailing his advice on chalking were entered into evidence. Basically, well firstly "chalking" there refers to writing on the ground in chalk whereas here it is usually assumed to mean writing on the chalkboards (as, it seems to me we don't get much of it on the ground around here), and furthermore it turns out Vakil recommends spraying your chalking with hairspray to make it stay longer. Now you know.
   The other interesting thing about the case was that Vakil was absent (I think it occured during the summer?), but submitted an affadavit ... which was suppressed by the Defence! Basically his own counsel had his statements suppressed. Now one would conclude that he must not be very crafty at knowing what to say before a judicial council and fortunately his more legally savvy counsel is acting in his best interest --- but keep in mind that Vakil WAS counsel in the previous case. So.. yeah. My theory is his affadavit actually included even more perjury.
   Anyway by and large we were impressed with the reasoning of the ASUC Berkeley Judicial Counsel. One thing we had some dispute over was that they argued that the four defendants had been entirely aware of their counsel's perjury and done nothing to correct it, and should therefore be punished. I think most of us followed and agreed it tended to make sense, but our Justice Harney strongly disagreed saying the Defendant should not be held responsible at all for the actions of their counsel. I believe Harney had a good point, but in the "real world" attorneys can be held seperately accountable and the Defendant can be excused for going along with whatever their attorney thought was a good idea, since they would be expecting them to know what the correct way to behave is. In student government, the Defendant would be expected to know just about as much about the correct way to behave as their student counsel would, and therefore I think could be found culpably responsible for unethical behaviour of their counsel that benefitted them. ...but if it were ever to come up with us I'd certainly be amenable to contrary arguments, it is a good point.


   Anyway, so the Mock Election is still on. Vote if you have not yet. The Judicial Dictatorship in ASUCD! party is recommending you vote Kris Fricke #1, Mark Champagne #2, Brent Laabs #3, & Paul "Will never be forgiven for putting five justices off at an IAC meeting until the very very end, after a ten minute 'icecream break'" Harms #11.


   In other ASUCD news, a prominant Lead senator, Jon Sanders, has defected from the Lead party and declared himself independant. Lead senator Christine Rogers called for a closed session to discuss removing Sanders from the position of Senate President Pro Tempore immediately after his announcement, though she says it is unrelated.


Quote of the Day
[00:11:28] Darth Laabs: the problem is that everyone running in this election is more qualified to be a senator than anyone on the current senate
[00:11:36] Darth Laabs: except Kai [Kai being a candidate]


Picture of the Day

A close up of my Clockwork Orange makeup Tuesday, because I thought it was novel.

Comments

Silly Senate, Tricks are for kids

[cedyeus.livejournal.com]

I'm glad everyone was paying close attention when I totally embarrassed Greg "I'm not a big city lawyer" Russell by pointing out to him that Senators and Senator-elects are not considered "personel". Silly silly folks.

[lysandra.livejournal.com]

AFAIK, Harms has never sexually harassed anyone, or any of the other crap Laabs has done, which puts him far above Laabs in my book.

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

If the rumours are true, thten Harms may be more qualified than some senators in this area!