Tag: Union Senate

A Tribute to President Andy Hogan

How many of you have eaten in Sherman since Passover break?  I am right now.  I’ve been eating at Sherman a lot more since the latest round of improvements, and it’s become more crowed than it used to be since word has spread about the changes.  There are more options, more food cooked to order, and everything seems fresher and more appetizing.  All of a sudden, Sherman seems like less of a joke and more of a decent place to enjoy a meal.  And while credit should go to the Brandeis administration and Dining Services for their responsiveness to the community’s complaints, we should also remember what helped get the ball rolling on the path to large-scale dining reform: the advocacy and hard work of former Union President Andy Hogan.

I’m living in the Charles River apartments next year, as I’m sure many of you are.  If someone had told me before this semester that I’d wind up in Grad, I’d have been sorely disappointed; visions of leaky buildings and broken appliances would have crossed my mind.  However, I’m now excited for next year.  Grad is receiving a thorough renovation, and I’ll be one of the first to inhabit the fresh new living space.  Once again, I, along with the rest of the student body, owe a thank you to Andy Hogan for making this happen.

I feel that Andy often received an undeserved bad rap during his time in office.  He was censured by the Union Senate over the insignificant midyear senator amendment, and though he avoided the impeachment that Diana Aronin suffered, she at least got a public validation through her decisive reelection.  Despite the fact that he did everything he could to minimize the issue and keep it from becoming a distraction, he bore the brunt of the bad press the Union received in the wake of the impeachment fiasco.  The nadir came in the February 5th Hoot, which featured an editorial cartoon cruelly depicting the Student Union as a beheaded chicken.  The symbolism was tacky and completely uncalled for, particularly as the “head” of the Union continued succeeding in his advocacy projects and improving campus life.

Adding additional BranVan service during high traffic times?  Thanks, Andy.  Working to eliminate wasted energy by shutting off after-hours lights?  Thanks, Andy.  Expanding the awesome Clubs in Service project?  Thanks, Andy.  Getting a student voice on the powerful Presidential Search Committee?  Thanks, Andy.  The Union’s focus on student surveys this year allowed it to keep a finger on the pulse of the Brandeis community, and it used that knowledge for tangible results in many small but tangible ways, improving everything from our dining to our bathrooms.

Jason Gray definitely left some massive shoes to fill as Union President, and I can’t pretend I agree with every decision Andy has made over the past year.  But his term in office was punctuated with success on a number of levels, and I hope that the student body recognizes that.  Despite the manufactured controversy, a lot of us were looking only for results, and I think that Andy Hogan delivered.  I hope Andy knows that his hard work didn’t occur in a vacuum; I, at least, was watching, and I appreciate what he was able to do.

Getting Rid of Robert’s Rules

One of the biggest arguments in favor of the Union government restructuring proposal was that it would remove the difficult parliamentary procedure of the Senate.  The new Union Assembly would have been a smaller body, free from the obscure minutiae of Robert’s Rules of Order and easier for students to approach and work with.

Even if the amendment had passed, it’s uncertain that this would actually have happened.  The operating procedures for the Union governing bodies are found in the Bylaws, not the Constitution, and it would have been up to the Assembly members to decide to make the change. The five member Union Judiciary constantly chose to employ the most formal procedures possible; it’s entirely likely that the larger Assembly would have retained Robert’s Rules.

Still, the proposal had the support of at least 10 Senators, and I think that very few people would disagree that the devotion to Robert’s Rules is probably the biggest detriment to the Senate, both in student opinion and in quick and easy decision-making.  So how can the Union get rid of Robert’s Rules for good and replace it with a less formal, more appropriate debate format?

Actually, it would be very easy.  In fact, the Union Senate could do it at their next meeting, and we’d never have to worry about “points of order” or “motions to the previous question” again.  All it would take is a Bylaw amendment, which would need to be approved by a 2/3 vote of the Senate, and any Senator could submit the legislation.  I don’t know what procedure would replace it, but I’m sure it wouldn’t take much research to find a procedure more suited for smaller assemblies.  Alternatively, the Senate could just go without a formal procedure (as it does when it enters committee of the whole), which works surprisingly well as long as the chair is active in keeping the group focused.  Anything that allows the focus of the debate to be on the merits of the proposal rather than on the debate process itself would be an improvement.

There’s definitely a proper time and place for parliamentary procedure, but it’s not in a 20 person student assembly that focuses mainly on chartering clubs.  There’s nothing keeping the Senate from changing the way it operates, and no one likes the way it works now.  Why don’t they do something about it?

Union Restructuring: Why Did It Fail?

Of the changes proposed by the Constitutional Review Committee, none received more discussion than the Union government restructuring — the elimination of the Senate and the creation of a smaller Assembly and a Club Support Board.  It was endorsed as a great way to improve Union government efficiency by a wide range of campus sources, from the Justice editorial board to President Andy Hogan to our own writers.  Despite this, it was one of only three (out of 13) proposals that didn’t get the 2/3 majority of the student vote needed to be added to the Constitution.  So why did it fail, and what can we learn from it to fix the problems in the Union government?

I’ll start by saying that I really didn’t like the restructuring proposal.  I’m not sure that it would have actually solved the problems it tried to address, and there were several consequences of its changes that made me pretty uncomfortable.  It would have taken fewer students to make consequential decisions like de-chartering clubs, it would have raised the electoral barriers of participation higher, and it would have set up some explicit conflicts of interest for Club Support members.

But I doubt that even the small percentage of students who took the time to vote actually looked into the amendment very deeply.  Many of them probably saw the amendment for the first time when they voted, and their priorities were probably on amendments they saw as more directly impacting their lives on campus (SSIS, SEA, etc.).  Still, they chose to support most of the other proposals, even one which only changed a single word.

I think the problem with the restructuring proposal was much more simple: there was no immediately obvious benefit to the changes it offered.  So they wanted to make the Senate smaller and move the club chartering process to another body — why?  There’s a perception that students hate the Union because of its overly formal procedures, but I don’t think that’s true.  After all, how many students have to deal with the Senate on a regular, extended basis?  I think the real concern is what the Union actually does and the apparent disconnect between the Union government and the students, and there’s no reason to think that shrinking or dividing the governing bodies would have made a concrete change.

Thus, to most people, the government restructuring came down to a simple rearrangement of the deck chairs.  When you take out the votes of the CRC, the E-Board, and the Senate (who all actively worked to put the amendment on the ballot), you’re basically left with a coin flip from the voters.  There are definite problems with the way the Union works, but solving them requires a more direct approach than the CRC took toward the review process.

Priorities

The front page of this week’s Justice has, as its lead article, a story about the Constitutional Review Committee’s final report.  The article is well-written, comprehensive, and informative, and it’s accompanied by a nice, eye-catching picture.  The problem is that I don’t think anyone cares.

The CRC is one of those topics that’s only interesting to the very small minority of students who follow the Union closely.  Its meetings were held behind closed doors, its mission is basically just a reshuffling of the Union government, and even the best changes it proposes will measurably affect only a small percentage of the campus community.  You don’t have to take my word for it; in same issue’s ‘Brandeis Talks Back’ section, all four of the students they interview express complete apathy to the process.  Yes, the report is significant enough to merit coverage, but does it really deserve its front page status?

Meanwhile, you’d have to turn to page 5 of the paper to learn that a potential hate crime occurred on the Brandeis campus this weekend.  The newly-refurbished Muslim Student Association suite was viciously vandalized on Friday.  The wall in Imam Talal Eid’s office was permanently damaged, and his personal copy of the Quran was stolen.  The nature of the theft makes it hard to view this as anything but an attack against campus Muslims, and it absolutely sickens me to think that such a vile invasion could happen at the school I call home.  But apparently, it’s worth only one-sixth of a page buried in the News section, next to a full page of advertisements.

During Diana Aronin’s impeachment and trial, many people complained about the petty disagreements that the Union officers turned into a public spectacle.  I agree with them, but the campus media need to be held culpable as well for turning what should have been an internal Union affair into a weekly front-page spectacle.  If our Union government suffers from self-importance, it is only because they’re used to getting undue attention for every minor issue.  Meanwhile, the papers will continue to alienate their readers if they glorify topics that are ultimately irrelevant for most students.  I suspect that students are far more interested in uncovering hate on our campus than on how big the Union Senate will be next year, and I think the every campus media outlet needs to reassess what its reporting priorities should be.

Andy Hogan, Our New President

Today is Andy Hogan’s second full day on the job as Student Union President, and despite this high-profile position, I feel he’s still something of an unknown quantity to much of the student body, much more so than Jason Gray was last year.  There are several reasons for this: the Presidential race was much less competitive and low-profile than last year’s, Andy has only been a Union officer for one year, and his work has been much more organizational than Jason’s very public advocacy for the Student Bill of Rights.  However, in a very short period of time, Andy has quietly built up a stellar Union resume.  Last fall, he handily won the North Quad Senate seat despite running as a sophomore in a mostly freshman quad.  In just one semester of work, he impressed Jason Gray enough to be named Director of Community Advocacy.  And last month, he won the Union Presidency by over 350 votes.  His talents and character have already changed the Brandeis community for the better and are quickly gaining wide recognition; however, for those who still don’t really know Andy or who would like to know him better, I’d like to give a quick introduction to our new Union President.

I should start by saying that I’m far from an unbiased source.  Though I felt that being off campus made it appropriate for me to refrain from public comment on the spring elections, I was personally very happy to see Andy win.  But my relationship with him is much deeper than mere Union politics.  Andy has been one of my best friends since our first few weeks at Brandeis.  We joined (and subsequently left) TRON together, played together on countless intramural sports teams, served together on the Squash club E-Board, served together on the Union Senate, roomed next to one another, shared music, been repeatedly mistaken for brothers, and generally shared some of the best times I’ve had at Brandeis.  He was my campaign manager during my run for the Vice Presidency, and I still credit my victory more to him than to anyone else.  So yeah, I kinda like the guy.  But I also know him very well, and looking as objectively as possible, I can say that I think he’ll make an excellent leader for the Student Union.

Innermost Parts is an activist community, so it’s of particular importance to us that Andy has established himself as a leader on activist issues in the Student Union.  One of his first major projects was planning the Combating Hate Fundraiser, which broke all attendance expectations and raised over $2,000 for a black church that was burned in protest of Barack Obama’s victory.  He followed that with another successful fundraiser for rape victims in the Rwandan genocide.  On a more Brandeisian level, he played a huge role in launching and running the Clubs in Service program, and he helped dorm-storm with Student for Environment Action to raise awareness of water-bottle reduction.  He’s the only Union officer I’ve seen to devote a page of his campaign website just to explaining his views on the importance of social justice at Brandeis.  Clearly, he intends to make these issues a focal point of the Union’s work next year.

Andy is particularly dedicated to the Union government’s role as an advocacy body, and one of his primary focuses is on bringing the Union’s work to every student.  In this way, I see his mentality as a natural successor to Jason’s core value of increased student involvement, both within the Union and in the entire Brandeis community.  He was one of the first senators to join the new Senate Outreach Committee, and he was one of its most active members, drafting the Stall Street Journal and planning events targeted at spreading awareness of the Union’s work to freshmen.  Critically, he views outreach as a tool for generating student feedback, not as a self-promotion gimmick.  He gave us the cell phone amplifier in Usdan in response to numerous student complaints, working successfully with administrators to improve student life.

His plans for next year come naturally from these concerns, and I’m very excited to see some of them implemented.  I’m particularly impressed by his ideas in the long-overdue area of club collaboration reform, which will create an online system for booking spaces and discussing co-sponsorship, making event planning quicker and less expensive.  Andy also wants to improve methods for instantaneous student feedback on Union projects.  Discussion boards have been very effective at generating diverse ideas from the whole community for the CARS subcommittees, and there is no reason why they cannot be used on a Union level as well.  He remains committed to starting and expanding environmentally-friendly projects like Deis Bikes, and his planned social justice identity forums will inspire discussion on the many ways this pillar of Brandeis is interpreted in the community, ultimately creating connections for socially responsible programs where none currently exist.

This past year has been unprecedented in the scope and importance of the Union’s successes, largely because of Andy’s contributions.  I expect Andy Hogan’s leadership to make next year just as productive as this one has been.

UJ Declines to Hear Case on Electoral Eligibility

The Union Judiciary just sent out an e-mail denying certiorari (declining to hear) a case brought by Henry Schleifer, a former write-in candidate for next year’s UJ.  Henry had formed a Facebook group to campaign for the position despite the fact he’s currently studying abroad.  However, because his term would technically begin next Wednesday during spring inaugurations, he is ruled to have violated Article IX Section 2 of the Union Constitution, which states “To be eligible to run for an elected Union office, a student must be… Studying on the Waltham campus for the entire period in which s/he will hold office.”  This decision was made by Tia Chatterjee on the basis of a precedent set in Tansey v. Herman in a 2002 UJ case and upheld on precedent by this year’s Judiciary.

Tia did the right thing by upholding the accepted interpretation of the law, but the fact that this precedent exists at all can only be described as fucking stupid (though even more explicit phrases might be appropriate as well).  Much of the justification for the decision in Tansey v. Herman is no longer applicable under more recent study abroad rules, and I find it to be pretty weak in any case (the entire decision can be found here in PDF form).  It seems that the Constitution has been changed in the time since the decision to make the “studying on the Waltham campus” requirement a little more apparent, but there’s still a very good case that the current interpretation is not what was originally intended.  Tia is quoted in the complaint as saying “Seniors who are quad senators violate that section too. terms for quad senators run from september to september. currently the quad senators for Village, Ridgewood, Mods, Ziv, Off campus and Charles River are all seniors. [sic]”  The Village and Mod Quads are for seniors only; under this interpretation, there is NO ONE who is eligible to represent either in the Senate.

I wish that the UJ had decided to hear this case and challenge precedent, especially considering that there aren’t enough balloted candidates for the five open spots, making it unlikely that anyone would really object.  The quickest way to change the policy from here on in would be to launch a challenge to one of the six aforementioned senators, a challenge which the UJ would be forced to accept for consistency’s sake.  I don’t suggest doing this without that particular senator’s consent; it would be unfair to make a senior who’s about to graduate go through the hassle of defending their seat for just one Senate meeting.  However, if one of those senators did agree, it would be a nice way to end their Union careers by helping to change this foolish precedent.

As it is, juniors studying about during their spring semester are prevented from serving in Union government positions for the final two years of their Brandeis career merely because of the 10 or so days they miss, which, because they fall during finals, are very rarely active days for the Union in any case.  I think most people would agree with me that that just isn’t right.

The full text of the complaint and the order denying certiorari are below the fold.

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The Midnight Buffet — Is It Worth It?

At their last meeting, the Union Senate passed SMR S09-14, which provided funding for this semester’s Midnight Buffet, which will be held on April 29th.  The resolution called for $3650.10, and that total was apparently amended upwards to $3750 during the meeting.

The resolution itself is noteworthy for being over a thousand dollars lower than the traditional $5000 granted from the Senate’s operating budget for the Midnight Buffet.  The decrease was made in deference to the cap on the Union Activities Fee, and I’m pretty sure the additional money was or will be transferred to the F-Board to distribute to clubs during emergency request meetings.  This is a good gesture on the Union’s part to ease the substantial decrease in programming forced upon many clubs, but it’s still less than many people wanted.  While $1250 helps a little bit, the full $5000 would have helped even more.  Should the Midnight Buffet have been canceled in light of the F-Board’s decreased funds?

Those who have argued for cancellation point not only to the SAF but also to the economy in general, claiming that it’s irresponsible to spend so much money on a frivolous event (the Justice editorial page endorsed this perspective).  Clubs could use the money for more substantial events than what North Quad Senator Alex Norris calls the Union’s “Bread and Circus” event.  Giving the whole $5000 to the F-Board would open more of the SAF to the entire student body and take away from the amount that only the Senate has discretion over.

Proponents of the Midnight Buffet point to the event’s universal appeal and long tradition as a campus-wide celebration before finals.  Students deserve a reward after a semester’s worth of work and need something to alleviate the stress of finals.  I’ve heard many people describe the Midnight Buffet as one of their favorite events at Brandeis, and it always draws a huge crowd.  $3750 wouldn’t amount to much money when you consider how many clubs would be asking for a piece of it.   In addition, the Midnight Buffet is mandated by the Union bylaws, and changing the bylaw would make canceling the event a more complicated process than merely not funding it.

While I’ve always enjoyed the Midnight Buffet in the past, I think sacrificing it would be a small price to pay for the benefits of opening more money to the cash-starved clubs.  However, I accept that mine may be the minority opinion, and I ultimately think the event should be funded at the discretion of the student body as a whole.  In the future, I’d like to see the Midnight Buffet removed as a requirement from the bylaw; instead, I think the Senate should engage in more outreach and polling to determine on a semester-by-semester basis if the event is something the community truly wants.  The money being used comes from everyone — it’s only fair that everyone should have a voice.

SU Senate votes to recognize Unificationist club – good or bad idea?

Today, the SU Senate voted to recognize a club that essentially is a college-level chapter of the Unification Church movement.

The Unification Church is a new age religion, called a cult by some, founded by a man named Sun Myung Moon in 1954. He claims to have seen Jesus Christ in a vision, who charged Moon with completing his work and unifying all sects of Christianity into a single moral force. The Church’s primary goal is this unification, and the promotion of heterosexual family units through arranged marriage.

In very large part, the Unification Church is driven by Moon, who is revered with near-prophetic worship by the Church’s members (those outside the organization often call its members Moonies for this reason). Moon is a very incendiary figure, a megalomaniac who somehow managed to book a Senate office building on Capitol Hill to crown himself the Messiah. He has stated,

“Emperors, kings and presidents . . . have declared to all Heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity’s Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent.”

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Cell Phones? In Usdan?!?!

Here’s Andy Hogan, the Union’s Director of Community Advocacy, discussing the new cell phone amplifier in lower Usdan.  Andy was the driving force behind the project and secured funding for it from the Office of Facilities Services.:

As of Monday morning, you can now use your cell phones in lower Usdan.  The amplifier that was installed takes reception from outside and projects it into the building.  If your phone has bad reception normally, than this is not too much of an improvement for you (sorry T-mobile users).  However, if your phone gets normal reception outside, you will now be able to use it while eating in lower.  As for the range of the amplifier, the stairs between upper and lower still has poor reception but I have been able to get service from Home Zone to the C-store.  If you want to look for it, its installed on one of the walls of the skylight in the middle of lower.

As I was dormstorming during my campaign for North Quad Senator, one of the main issues people had was cell phone reception on campus.  Many people’s phones did not even work in their dorm but mainly people complained about lower Usdan.  At first, I looked for improving reception on the whole campus.  When this proved too expensive and difficult to coordinate with the companies I looked specifically for lower Usdan.  I found this amplifier and spoke to facilities about installing it.    There have been many complaints about this project as a waste of funds in a time of cutting down, as a luxury.  This is a useful project because even though we are cutting back it is important to always improve our campus.  We should not just shut down in a time of crisis, we should fight for improvement and even luxuries.  When I went around to my constituents, they gave me a way to improve the campus and as a student government representative I wanted to fulfill their suggestion.