Aggie Article

[aggienaut]

From the campus Green Party listserver:
   Just wanted to show everyone what a few of us have been up to lately. This is an article that was on the California Aggie website and the ASUCD website last night but was removed from both sites by Creative Media. The reporter for the article (who did a great job) also stated that it was going to be printed in today's paper but it was unfortunately not. Nonetheless, here's a copy of the article taken from the California Aggie website late last night. Enjoy.

Tuesday March 16, 2004

Davis college greens file complaints against ASUCD
Complaints target student government administrators in dispute over voting results
Send a letter to the editor

By AIMEE THERON
Aggie News Writer

Davis College Green Party President Jonathon Leathers and Vice President Mike Siminitus filed two ASUCD Student Court complaints against ASUCD units Creative Media and the Student Government Administrative Office on Thursday in an attempt to "promote more transparency" in student government.

The complaint filed by Leathers alleges that SGAO and Creative Media failed to enforce rules that say important ASUCD documents - like ballot measures and student court case rulings - be made available to students online.

Leathers - a first-year political science major - said that the failure to enforce the bill, which was signed into law in May 2003, showed a "lack of communication" within ASUCD.

"The fact that they passed a bill and have yet to do anything about it nine months later shows that everyone points the finger at each other [in ASUCD] and nobody actually does anything."

Student Government Advisor Vicki Swett, who was named as a defendant in both! complaints, said that she "couldn't agree more" that the documents should be posted online but that Creative Media lacked the manpower to carry out the provisions of the bill at the time it was passed.

Swett also said that ASUCD was in the process of discussing the issue when the complaint was filed.

"All of us were meeting to discuss how we're going to do this and decide if we needed to add more staff to Creative Media," she said. "The next thing I knew, there was a complaint being filed."

Siminitus filed the second complaint, which he said was related to the first, as they are both aimed at maintaining open government.

Ballot information from the winter quarter ASUCD elections will be released in the form of an 800-page printed document, which Siminitus said was "not acting in the letter and spirit" of the 2003 Choice Voting Amendment to the ASUCD constitution.

Not having the rankings in electronic format, he said, makes it "virtually i! mpossible" for students and organizations to perform the allowed recou nt.

Siminitus added that to enter the printed data into an electronic format, "someone would need to go into [the SGAO] and type for two and a half months straight during every hour that they're open."

Chris Jerdonek, a member of the Davis College Green Party who is planning to testify for the plaintiff in Student Court, added that having the data more readily available for recount would "produce more integrity in the government."

However, Swett said that the person who created the elections program recommended that ballot rankings not be released in electronic format for security reasons.

"I was told that releasing ballot rankings could compromise elections in the future," she said.

Newly-elected ASUCD President Kalen Gallagher said that students who want to perform a recount can do so through the ASUCD Elections Committee.

He added that the ASUCD Constitution "says [ASUCD] has to give [students] a copy of the ballot rankings to che! ck. It doesn't say that they have to be in a certain format."

In addition to the text of the constitution and the printed ballot rankings, Siminitus plans to use e-mail correspondence between Elections Committee Chair Mary Ball and Jerdonek as evidence in the case. One of these e-mails contains ASUCD's initial decision to provide the ballot rankings in text format.

A court date has not yet been scheduled to evaluate the complaints.

Whats Going On?
   For those of you who don't go to UC Davis or don't know what this is all about: I am the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of our student government (ASUCD), and as such both these cases will come before the court I preside over. We have not yet had a chance to formally consider whether or not we shall accept the cases.
   What does concern me though is that Creative Media, which maintains ASUCD and the Cal Aggie (our newspaper) websites, and is a defendant in both cases, may have removed the article from both websites. I hope someone is looking into it.


Related
   Green Party Press Release
   Cases #24 & #25 in Brief
   Jurisdiction over Career Employees
   Scrambling to Fulfill SB#48

Comments

[obisan69.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I am highly concerned as to why that article disappeared.

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

As am I, as am I.

[obisan69.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'll raise a fuss at the senate meeting after break. That would be fun.

I need more topics to be bitchy about, since I've only got 10 weeks left in my term.