At Senate today the six senators elected a year ago made their farewell speeches and were replaced by six new senators. In their farewell speeches, Senator Spencer Higgens announced his intention to run next quarter as the Focus Presidential Candidate, Senator Kareem Salem announced his intention to run as the Lead Presidential Candidate, and Senator Jonathon "Independant" Sanders --who almost exactly a month ago left the Lead party with "no plans on running for office on another slate in the future" announced his intention to run as the Focus Vice Presidential Candidate. The ASUCD Advisor / SGAO then completely overstepped their authority and gave the six outgoing senators the certificates of election that the Elections Chairman had refused to issue last year (stating that he could not in good conscience certify the election after the qualifications for office had been retroactively changed). Technically this would finally make these outgoing senators real senators, at least for a few minutes until the new ones were sworn in -- but lacking the Elections Chairman's signature I guess they're not really certificates of election.

   As I'm still in office, this bring the total number of Senators I've served with as Chief Justice to 57.


Inaccurate Tasering
   I was also very amused today that our paper the Cal Aggie carried a "guest editorial" from the UCLA Daily Bruin titled "UCSA Taser Resolution Inaccurate, Uninformed." Coming from a school that not only is still a member of UCSA (the UC Student Assn), but was the location of the tasering incident itself, this chastisement is so much stronger than if it had come from us.
   In conclusion, the staff of UCSA should be tasered.

   Basically, it looks like the Supreme Court of ASUC Berkeley found the president-elect to have become disqualified. President-elect Oren Gabriel then sued the ASUC Judicial Council (their Court) in the local Superior Court. The Superior Court judge summarily dismissed the case because all internal ASUC avenues of resolution had not been exhausted -- there was still an appeal pending before the Judicial Council -- but not before Gabriel managed to incur $22,679 in legal fees.

   The President's party with allied parties "UNITE Greek" & "APPLE Engineering"¹ control 14 of 20 senators, and have authored a bill to reimburse the president for his legal fees. Opponents, including opposition party CalSERVE, argue that since the legal action was unnecessary, it is unfair to use student fees to support it.

¹Apparently they've discovered the secret that if you make your name an acronym it'll keep getting typed up in all-caps, not that anyone here in ASUCD or at EMOSNAIL would ever stoop to that


   In a recent debate in ASUCD about a bill to reduce spending limits for ASUCD campaigns, someone commented "I really don't know why people even spend $250 to get elected." Well, apparently, some people are willing to spend $22,679 for equivalent positions.
   I think he should not only not get reimbursed, he should have to record the expense as a campaign expenditure. (=


In Other News the ASUCD Senate voted 1-11-0 today NOT to pay the increased fee UCSA wanted from us. It is believed by many that UCSA will consequently deny our right to vote in their governance and we will therefore secede.


Picture of the Day

ASUCD Senator Jonathon "Tiny" Sanders demonstrates his technique for tabling for Prop 89