Aram Ghoogasian: USAC bylaw would undermine student interests

When governing bodies vote to make their guiding documents more lenient, red flags are rightly raised.

The Undergraduate Students Association Council is taking just such a vote Tuesday. The student government will vote on a bylaw change that aims to clarify what constitutes a conflict of interest for sitting councilmembers.

USAC President Avinoam Baral said he is proposing the change in response to a case from May in which the USAC Judicial Board ruled that two councilmembers did not engage in conflicts of interest after receiving free trips to Israel from two pro-Israel organizations.

Following the ruling, the board suggested reforming the USAC bylaws to define conflicts of interest more clearly.

While the board is right in saying that the bylaws could be misinterpreted because of ambiguous wording, the proper response is to intensify the restrictions on potential conflicts of interest, not relax them.

It’s true that the bylaw should be modified, but not in the way Baral has written it. The proposed change will only make the bylaw unnecessarily lenient, limiting the student body’s ability to call out inappropriate behavior by members of USAC.

As it stands, the bylaw states that elected and appointed USAC members shall not “directly or indirectly receive improper benefits … as a result of his or her position.” It subsequently states that they “shall avoid even the perception of such a conflict of interest.”

The proposed change to the language states that a conflict of interest must be the direct result of an “ongoing financial or contractual obligation to any individual or organization that may cause divided loyalty” instead. It also removes the word “perception” from the bylaws. These changes aren’t protecting student interests; they’re protecting council interests and directly going against the mission of USAC to serve the student body.

By removing wording such as “perception,” the definition of “improper benefits” could change based on a councilmember’s idea of what “improper” means. If certain benefits only seem improper, it’s not enough for students’ complaints to hold any weight, according to the proposed change. Students will have a harder time voicing their grievances if their perception no longer matters in the bylaws. This is dangerous territory.

Instead of enacting bylaws that make it easier for councilmembers to engage in conflicts of interest, USAC should include language that bars councilmembers from receiving any benefits at all from outside entities. Councilmembers shouldn’t have any “ongoing financial or contractual obligation to any individual or organization” whatsoever, whether or not it “may cause divided loyalty.” Making that change eradicates the issue of vagueness by stipulating that any kind of benefit from an outside organization to any member of USAC is flat-out inappropriate – nobody has to guess, and the bylaws continue to be appropriately strict on councilmembers.

The problem has affected several councilmembers in the past year alone. In addition to the Judicial Board case last year, we saw the problem of perception come up with a free trip student regent-designate Avi Oved took last year when he was internal vice president. The conference he attended on the trip hosted an Azeri diplomat who spoke as a representative of the state of Azerbaijan, which holds a well-known record of racism and human rights violations. Oved didn’t pay for the trip with his own money, and he attended the conference as a representative of the entire UCLA undergraduate population. Because of that, some students saw his trip as unethical.

If the bylaw change passes, trips that pose problems like Oved’s can go unchecked in the future, regardless of how students perceive them.

USAC officers need to be held to a strict standard when it comes to receiving benefits as a result of their positions. It’s in the best interest of students for USAC to strike down the proposed change on Tuesday, because councilmembers are first and foremost representatives of the student body, not themselves.

The Judicial Board suggested in May that USAC do something about this specific bylaw. Baral put it on himself to answer its call, but his proposal is misguided.

Making the language of the bylaw less ambiguous is a worthy effort if handled properly. However, the residual effects of the change could give councilmembers more leeway with the benefits they receive, potentially harming students. USAC needs to go back to the drawing board if it wants more effective conflict of interest rules.