Author: Martha Carol
On Oct. 13, the ASOC Senate finalized preparations for the Oct. 15 elections, evaluated committee activities, and reviewed funding requests. The senators, during the past week, focused on strengthening relations with clubs, improving handling of finances, bringing zip cars to campus, and increasing student involvement in Oxy policy making.
The election for new General Assembly (GA) co-chairs as well as voting for the proposed amendments to the ASOC constitution, was open for ASOC voters on Thursday Oct. 15. Andrew Leede (senior) and Daniel Wolf (first-year) won the election and are the new 2009 GA co-chairs. Voting for the constitutional amendments will continue until Friday, Oct. 23.
The Outreach Committee redirected its attentions to bringing 31st District Representative Xavier Becerra (D-CA) to campus. The committee originally intended to focus its efforts on having greater connections with President Barack Obama. After great criticism by the Wall Street Journal of Occidental College’s purported obsession with alumnus Obama, the Outreach Committee re-evaluated its attempts to strengthen relations with Obama.
“Xavier Becerra has a lot of impact on issues that enter Congress. Becerra is second in seniority under Nancy Pelosi. Plus, Congress-people have to come home during the week anyway so it wouldn’t be hard to have him on campus. If we had Becerra on campus, there would be a greater focus on issues that impact Occidental rather than the hype over Obama” said Senator Jessie Durrett (first year).
The Green Committee reported that there had been progress with bringing the ZIP car program to campus and that they had plans to help the ASOC better connect with and understand the clubs it funded. The committee continued to work to bring administrators into the effort to get ZIP cars on campus and looked into risk assessment for the school. Branching outside of its environmental focus, the Green Committee presented its plans to attend various club meetings in order to better understand what the Senate funds every week.
The Policy Committee briefly reviewed its research of the policy-making procedures of Occidental College and its plans to have greater student involvement. In talking with administrators, the committee found that much of the change to school policy is made over the summer. The committee discussed having a student come in during the summer to work with administrators to change school policies.
The Senate reviewed requests by La Encina, the school yearbook, several sororities and fraternities, FEAST (Food, Energy, and Sustainability Team), the Queer Straight Alliance (QSA), the Vagina Monologues group, and Outdoors Club. The Senate discussed whether the amount of money requested by each group was reasonable for the intended use. A particular focus was placed on giving more funding to clubs and events that benefitted the larger community. Continuing their efforts to stay within budget, the Senators discussed the reorganization of records of all ASOC funding from the past few years.
“We’re doing well. We didn’t spend very much money. We are making up for the weeks when we did spend a lot” said Senator Aliza Goldsmith (sophomore).
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