USAC approves change to guidelines on meeting live streams
By Nicholas Yu
April 29, 2015 2:13 a.m.
UCLA’s undergraduate student government voted unanimously Tuesday to change the guidelines for council meeting live streams so future recordings require a majority vote of council to remove.
The guideline changes come after the removal of a YouTube video of a controversial council meeting in February.
The previous guidelines only required the Undergraduate Students Association Council to live stream its meetings and said the videos would not be archived.
The Internal Vice President’s office created the USAC Live! YouTube channel last year in an effort to increase transparency and make meetings more accessible to students who cannot attend in person.
USAC Internal Vice President Heather Hourdequin and Financial Supports Commissioner Heather Rosen first proposed the changes in a council meeting on April 21.
“We should update the guideline to reflect what we’re doing,” Hourdequin said. “And what we’re currently doing is live streaming and archiving (videos of) the meetings.”
When the guidelines changes were proposed, Fabienne Roth, a general representative, asked why USAC meetings should be archived in the first place.
“Archiving would allow USAC to have a straight record,” USAC President Avinoam Baral said in response. “There would be clear unaltered footage (of the meeting).”
On Feb. 10, several USAC councilmembers questioned whether Rachel Beyda’s Jewish identity would conflict with her ruling fairly on cases if appointed to the USAC Judicial Board.
People were angered by the comments of the councilmembers and accused them of making discriminatory assumptions about Beyda, a second-year economics student, during the appointment process. Multiple media outlets, including The New York Times, reported on the controversy.
After talking with administrators, Hourdequin removed the video in March because several councilmembers said they received death threats from people angry about their comments.
“Councilmember safety was at risk, and not just for those councilmembers who said those nasty comments,” Hourdequin said at the USAC candidate debates on Sunday. “I’m going to prioritize safety over transparency.”
Because the old guidelines said the videos would not be archived, Hourdequin did not violate any rules. USAC voted 8-1-3 to put the video back up at its meeting on March 10.
