USAC works on new bylaw amendment on resolution process
By Jessica Doumit
Feb. 10, 2014 1:35 a.m.
The original version of this article contained an error and has been changed. See the bottom of the article for additional information.
Undergraduate student government officials are working on a bylaw amendment that would extend the time period between when resolutions are initially submitted and when the council votes for approval.
The amendment seeks to increase student outreach and Undergraduate Students Association Council transparency by giving students at least 10 days to view and comment on USAC resolutions before they go to a vote.
Currently, councilmembers are required to submit resolutions for the weekly USAC meeting agendas by Thursday at 5 p.m. before the council’s Tuesday meeting.
This leaves about four to five days for students to comment on resolutions on USAC’s website and for students to learn about the resolution.
According to Internal Vice President Avi Oved, more than 100 students have currently used the resolution comment feature.
Harsimar Dhanoa and Fabienne Roth, the members of the Internal Vice President’s Office who are drafting the amendment, said they plan to meet with councilmembers in upcoming weeks to discuss the amendment’s language and gather feedback.
Dhanoa, a third-year psychology student, and Roth, a second-year English student, said they have been working on the amendment since October. Some students also discussed the amendment in a USAC town hall meeting, which the Internal Vice President’s Office hosted on Dec. 2.
The goal of the amendment is to create a system in which a resolution is not just another agenda item, Roth said.
Under the new amendment, students would submit resolutions to council a week earlier than they currently do, on the Thursday two weeks before going to a vote.
Roth and Dhanoa said they are trying to see if they can post resolutions on MyUCLA so students can more easily access the text of the documents.
Though Oved is in support of USAC increasing awareness of resolutions to students, he stated that the amendment was not something he was going to push forward to council.
While the draft amendment states that in more urgent conditions, resolutions could bypass the extended waiting period and go to council as a regular agenda item, Oved stated that he believed that it can be hard to define when resolutions are campus climate issues and that may cause unclarity.
Oved did state that he thinks resolutions are largely symbolic, so he does support applying the requirement of 250 signatures for resolutions, allowing councilmembers to include the student body’s thoughts.
Since the amendment is still a draft, councilmembers and other student can weigh in on its wording or change parts of it.
Dhanoa and Roth said they hope to finalize the amendment by the end of winter quarter.
Correction: Harsimar Dhanoa and Fabienne Roth plan to meet with USAC councilmembers in upcoming weeks.
