Analysis of Birgeneau Speculation

The Canadian newspapers have begun to pick up on the possible move of University of Toronto President Robert Birgeneau to UC Berkeley. However, even their stories show that they really don't know jack about the situation, and that this is all weak speculation at best.

From the Toronto Star:

"'Bob loves Berkeley,' said a long-time colleague yesterday upon learning this week that Birgeneau is on a short list to become chancellor of Berkeley, with its rumoured salary of more than $600,000 (Canadian) a year, compared with his current salary of $427,000."

It is likely that Birgeneau was, at least at one point, on the short list for the job. Birgeneau is a good friend of UC President Dynes, and probably was connected to the process through that. But according to all reports, Birgeneau has not been made an offer for the position. And, he probably won't ever be made an offer. On top of that, Birgeneau is not compatible with Berkeley, especially its biggest problem. Again, from the Star:

"Some at the university complain that Birgeneau's own physics lab work into electrical conductivity has limited his efforts on the business side of the top job, including fundraising. But others note he has been a vocal champion of government funding for universities."

That's great… if you work in a socialist country, such as Canada. Taking this approach here will be like ramming into a brick wall, especially considering the budget deal already worked out by the UC system and the governor’s office. Our new chancellor needs to be able to fundraise both publicly and privately, and Birgeneau has not established that he has this skill.

On top of the fundraising issue, Birgeneau is not prepared to make a jump from U of Toronto to Berkeley – heck, the two schools aren’t even in the same ballpark. And, if UC Berkeley decides to give Birgeneau the job, it will be a PR disaster. He is not a very qualified candidate for the position, and not the knight in shining armor that the Berkeley administration needs after the delays in this selection debacle.

While Birgeneau has been on CalStuff's short list of likely chancellors, there are other names higher than his on the list, and it is not probable that he will be in Berkeley for the fall. Expect a bigger name from a bigger university to get the job – and candidates with these traits are still out there, and on the short list.
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Chronicle Speculates on Chancellor Replacement

The SF Chronicle's Matier and Ross wrote today that sources within the university are pointing to University of Toronto President Robert Birgeneau as the likely choice to succeed Robert Berdahl and become the next Chancellor of UC Berkeley.

Birgeneau admitted to being interviewed for the job, but denied he was offered the position.

Nonetheless, Birgeneau left little doubt that he's ready to take the post if it comes his way, saying that Berkeley is "simply the best teaching and public research university'' and that "no matter what happens, I feel privileged to be in that pool of candidates considered to lead it.''

The Chronicle points out that Birgenau shares some connections with current UC President Robert Dynes. They were both colleagues at AT&T's Bell laboritories and both hail from Canada.

If Birgeneau ends up being the choice it is sure to disappoint many on campus who were pushing for a female and/or or minority Chancellor.

Perhaps to begin pacifying this crowd Birgeneau mentioned in the interview that he would bring "a very deep commitment to equity and inclusion." It sounds familiar to the type rhetoric regularly employed by Berdahl on these issues. How much it will pacify remains to be seen.

No date for an announcement has been set, but speculation has heightened in the last few weeks. It remains to be seen whether Birgeneau is the choice or if university officials threw this story to the Chronicle to throw everyone off the chase.
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Latinos less likely to get degrees

According to a new study by the Pew Hispanic Center, Latino undergraduates are half as likely to get a college degree by age 26 than White undergrads. This isn't limited to less-selective campuses.

"Even among the best-prepared students at top colleges with high graduation rates, Latinos lagged whites somewhat. According to the report, at the most selective institutions — a category including UCLA and UC Berkeley — 83% of Latinos graduate, versus 90% of whites, by age 26."

How does this affect affirmative action causes? Well, if the goal of affirmative action is to produce more Latino college graduates to match the state proportion, then colleges have to admit a percentage of Latinos much larger than the state proportion. Inevitably, this would never work. A better first step would be to fight the problems that are causing these dropouts (ie poor high school education) and to stress retention, not recruitment, in campus communities. Email This Post!

Click here to see pictures of the new and (supposedly) improved Upper Sproul Plaza.

In my opinion, I really don't think the black and red tiles either match the existing building colors. They certainly stand in dark contrast to our school colors...Email This Post!

Clinton takes on Telegraph

President Clinton is coming to Cody’s Books on Tuesday, June 29 at noon to autograph copies of his new book. Anyone who is interested in going should be there early, as lines will probably form quickly to catch a glimpse of our former President. Protestors should be there early, too, because the Secret Service will be there in force, and space for protesting will probably be hard to come by.
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Fighting for your right... to not have AIDS

The Berkeley ACLU has a team participating in the next AIDS Walk in San Francisco. Now, regardless of how you feel about the ACLU, no one can argue that helping victims of AIDS isn't a good cause (unless, maybe, you're a diehard believer in the ideas of Malthus). So, put your money where your mouth is (assuming you have it) and sponsor their team. Or, if you object that vehemently to the ACLU, find another team to sponsor. It's all to help the same cause.

Anyone who donates to any team will receive some reward from the CalStuff staff. Ideas for a reward would also be appreciated.
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Another Woman Attacked in Berkeley
The Daily Cal has another article today on a near sexual assault in Berkeley. Here are the details:

A woman was the victim of an attempted sexual assault on Southside early Friday, police said.
The attempted sexual assault occurred about 3:49 a.m. on the 2700 block of Channing Way.

Again, there is a description of the suspect in the article, as well as instructions of what to do if you know anything about this. If there are more reports like this throughout the summer, then it is an indication that there is a major problem that needs to be addressed.

The school should not tolerate this type of crime occuring right near campus, and we, as students, should not stand for it either. Let's hope that this is the last we hear of attacks like this for a long while.Email This Post!

Surpassing Mediocrity

In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, I’d like to thank the Daily Californian for, after a semester of mediocre opinion columns, finally finding a couple of writers with some talent. And, in a reversal from years past, these are the summer staff writers. Brad Luen and Alex Liu have written some very good articles in the last few weeks.

Now, for those of you who thought that the all-female ensemble from last semester wasn’t representative of the Berkeley student demographic, the two writers for the summer are both Asian males. The reversal in writer gender has also seemed to reverse a trend of writing that lacked, among other things, originality and any thought-provoking substance. Draw any connection between the two independently from this entry. The articles of Ms. Stein are of course exempt from this criticism, though her taste in fraternities and bashing my former RA [see bottom of article, you’ll see the original title] stand to be improved.

In any event, I’m sure you all have some free time this summer, so check in with The Daily Cal for some decent opinion columns. With CalStuff around, no one really goes there for breaking news coverage anyway. They can probably use the traffic.
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Daily Cal Report on Woman's Sexual Assault Troubling
This Daily Cal article on a woman who was, "sexually assaulted after being forced into a car by two attackers on a West Berkeley street in broad daylight last week" is rather frightening.

Women in Berkeley are constantly told not to walk alone at night, due to the fear of something like this happening. To hear about such a attack happening during the day is cause for major concern. Hopefully this is only an isolated incident, as the police say in the article. Regardless, no one comes to Berkeley without realizing that it isn't one of the safest schools out there, and it's probably a good idea to travel in groups as much as possible, even during the day.

The incident occurred at Bonar and University (Bonar crosses University a few blocks east of San Pablo). There is a description of the car used and the suspects in the article, if anyone thinks they may know anything about this.

The latest news on crime in Berkeley was an April report noting that violent crime in Berkeley has reached a 35 year low.Email This Post!

Berkeley to Build New Think Tank
As our campus undergoes its current cosmetic facelift on Sproul, construction continues on other parts of the campus as well. One new addition is a state of the art math think tank. This construction is important because of the prestige it can bring to Berkeley in mathematics. This will be beneficial for attracting top professors in a wide variety of math related fields, as well as boosting our reputation and national ranking. Anything that increases the prestige of a Berkeley diploma is good news in my book. Plus, Berkeley gets to be the site for all sorts of new cutting edge mathematics discoveries. Here are some more details on the project, from this article:

*University mathematicians joined leaders in business, technology and higher education in a groundbreaking ceremony Thursday afternoon for the [9 million dollar] Mathematical Science Research Institute, university officials said.
*The new institute will be a 14,000-square-foot addition to the current facility on the UC Berkeley campus.
*More than 1,700 American and foreign researchers visit the institute every year.

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Anti-Divestment Petitions Fading Away

A former Berkeley web petition dedicated to fighting Israeli divestment efforts on campus, www.ucjustice.org, has been fazed out. No explanation is available on the website; however, after some investigation, similar fates have been met of other anti-divestment petitions at major universities across the country. It seems that these petition websites have been allowed to lapse… but for what reason?

It appears that this is a new trend among campus politics both at Berkeley and across the country: that IAC branches are feeling much less threatened by divestment movements, and by pro-Palestinian groups in general. This is not an unjustified shift in policy, since there have been NO major successful movements for a public institution to divest from Israel. Even anti-Apartheid movements in the 80s had success with movements pushing for divestment from South Africa. Groups like SJP have had no such successes in convincing either campus administration or the general public in the merits of their cause. In this light, it must not have seemed relevant or practical to maintain these web petitions.Email This Post!

All UC labs up for separate independent bidding

The Department of Energy has decided that both major laboratory facilities currently under UC control (Livermore and Los Alamos) will be up for bid independently for each other. This unpackaged deal is much more appealing to smaller, more independent contractors, making it less likely that a larger institution (i.e. a publicly funded university) will control both labs.

A full story can be found on the Daily Cal website.

If the university loses control of the administration for any or all of these labs, it will be more than just a financial setback for the university. Acts like these add to a string of debacles, like the folly that has become of the chancellor search and the press relations disaster of “admissions discrepancies”, that have continued to mar this university’s reputation. The campus administration continues to lose ground in the public arena without any justifiable (if there could be one) reason, and at this point, it is not just a string of random events. The administration needs to wake up, and fast, if it wants to avoid a fate of public school mediocrity for Berkeley, floundering as one of America’s flagship schools.
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ASUC Activity

Now that the 2004-05 ASUC Executive Board has been officially installed, the first round of Executive Orders have been issued. Since I’m sure everyone here hasn’t been running to Eshleman Hall with baited breath trying to find these, I’m posting them for your enjoyment.

EO 1 delays the training of the new ASUC Execs, which, under the bylaws, is supposed to take place during the week of Memorial Day. Obviously, this was impossible, and the EO is justified. However, what EO 1 does not do is put any kind of new training timetable in place. As the summer progresses, schedules and agendas are going to become more and more of a hindrance to planning the training, and the last thing we need now are untrained student leaders. Hopefully they take care of this ASAP. Edit: They are taking care of it. Executives are in training this week.

While I’m on the subject, ASUC senators have not yet been notified of their own training and orientation, and it would be nice to be in the know on this one. If anyone has info on this one, please email me or post here.

EO 2 places Elliot Cohen, the Concerts Manager in ASUC SUPERB, into the position of interim undergrad reprensentative of the Store Operations Board. It also takes a nice underhanded jab at the previous student government and its inability to perform a function as simple as forming a committee to replace the outgoing manager of the SOB, a procedure outlined in the bylaws. Kudos to the writer.

I have electronic versions of the EOs - if you are interested, email me for a copy.Email This Post!

Oh Snap! [Berkeley Protesters Mocked]

There has been such saturation Reagan coverage I had to get the Reagan post off the top of CalStuff. For that reason, and for a laugh, here is something from The Onion, via the Berkeley LiveJournal.

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Reagan Owes Berkeley Big Time
In all the coverage of Reagan's death, I came across one particularly interesting article. Titled, Ronald Reagan launched political career using the Berkeley campus as a target, the article claims that Berkeley was a near singular (doubular?) focus of Reagan:

Reagan had two themes in his first run for office. The man who later became known as "The Great Communicator" vowed to send "the welfare bums back to work," and "to clean up the mess at Berkeley." The latter became a Reagan mantra.

The article also contains information on J. Edgar Hoover and his meddling with the campus and Reagan's relationship with Clark Kerr. Berkeley represented the perfect liberal foil to Reagan's growing conservative clout.

P.S. On a more person note, I am interning in Washington D.C. this summer. I am considering stopping by the Rotunda to see Reagan, and if do, I will be sure to wear Berkeley clothes. I will also be tremendously busy this summer interning, which means I probably won't be able to post as often as I would like to. I will attempt to post a couple of times a week, and if anyone sees anything interesting, be sure to e-mail it to me, and I would be glad to post it.Email This Post!

More Election Analysis

Senate Races
First and foremost, I have lots of praise to give fellow CalStuff blogger Ben Narodick for his campaign.

The Squelch! Gang ran an intelligent show; slate a lot of people and a few strong candidates and then watch the transfer votes prop up their leaders. It worked like a charm.

I have a lot of criticisms directed at my own campaign. Namely, I did not effectively expand my own voting block beyond what I first came up with when I sat down and wrote out a voter list. Those 80-90 some odd votes I ended up with are probably to a person the first 80-90 people I wrote down on my voter list.

In hindsight, I lacked the confidence to be aggressive on the campaign trail. Most of the time I stood out there and just handed out flyers while holding up my sign. That is a recipe for a loss.

This leads me to my next point. Best campaign: Manuel Buenrostro of Student Action. He did what I should have done for two whole weeks. Namely, be aggressive and approach new voters over and over again. I saw him walk countless people to their class while giving them his pitch. Just on the strength of his skills on the trail he deserved to win.

Worst Campaign: Amaury Gallais of BCR. The once mighty Republicans on campus could elect two Senators to the ASUC. This year they got shut out. Why?

Well several reasons. One, their candidate did almost no campaigning. Rather than get a sign and campaign on Sproul for two weeks rallying fellow Republicans to his cause, Amaury, it seems, expected three hundred votes to come his way by virtue of being affiliated with BCR. His brief flirtation with campaigning came on the Monday before the first day of voting. He handed out cards for a few hours.

The Republican club has over five hundred members and they generally bloc vote for 1-2 candidates. Last year Paul Lafata and the BCR candidate generated 250 first place votes combined. This year Mr. Gallais netted around 120 in the first round.

Also there was a crucial strategic error that can be attributed to the clubs president. In past practice it had been BCR policy to send out a voting list with Senate voting preference (List their candidate first followed by other BCR members who were running). Instead both Hovannes (fellow Senate candidate and Berkeley blogger) and myself were removed from the e-mail for allegedly campaigning for votes within the club. In an election that’s based on transferable votes, having multiple candidates is beneficial to the cause. This was demonstrated by Squelch! They turnout their own voters and help the slate at the same time! In this case they put one name on the e-mail and only his voters turned out. I myself had no incentive to tell my friends to throw Amaury a preference after the removal from the list.

What Happened to the other Independents?

I think a lot of Independent type people went with Student Action. People like Manny who was going to run Independent if he didn’t get slated greatly helped SA’s cause.

There was also the disappearance of a number of strong Independent parties. Where did Goatmilk, Rice, Independent APPLE, Fresno and all the others go? By the wayside it seems or taken in by Student Action. The new parties that sought to replace them, did not perform.

Some Other Random tidbits:
Incorporating Independents was a smart bet on SA’s part. It worked out for both groups. SA got its power back, and Independents greatly increased their chances of winning by running on the SA brand. What remains to be seen is whether SA’s independent executives will remain Independent.

What of reform? BEARS-United signature issue did not catch on as we had hoped. Yet the ASUC’s general state of decay remains. Every year more autonomy is lost, budget crises’ happen annually, and the student stores don’t make any money. Will SA’s independent executives and senators make moves to correct this trend or will they revert to traditional Student Action types. That is, throw a $3,000 ASUC ball for the hundred and fifty SA party members, while trading away power to the Administration. Time will tell, but I have hopes for Mr. Leybovich and gang. Email This Post!

Election Analysis

Exec Races

Conventional Wisdom seems to be that SA ran a strong campaign all around, and in particular President Leybovich lead the way by bringing in new constituencies like Engineers into the fold. At first glance this seems to be the case, but an analysis of past results brings this into doubt.

If we measure strength by voting figures here is what we get. President Leybovich received around 2200 first place votes in the election. Rather than placing him among the strongest Student Action presidential contenders, this total places him as one of the weakest SA candidates in recent memory.

Daniel Frankenstein while losing by 1300 votes last year still managed to beat Misha’s first round score by 500 votes. People might say, well Jake’s 850 votes took away from Misha’s first round total. True, but if we look further in the past, past SA Presidential Candidates had to deal with strong independent candidates. Jesse Gabriel for instance managed to get 2000 first place votes despite the fact that Independent contenders Sean Byrne and Kriss Primm combined total was nearly 3000 votes.

Yet Misha’s strength did help elect two other Student Action exec candidates. Another big influence on their victory was: Turnout. Conventional wisdom says that CalSERVE benefits from low turnout. But in the highest turnout election the ASUC ever had, CalSERVE swept SA. In a low turnout election this time around, SA took back Executive Seats.

How does low turnout benefit SA? Well it has its motivated base as well. Conservatives who were pissed of at CalSERVE’s ‘no on 54’ deal, Greeks who generally vote SA unless given some reason not to by a Kriss Primm like figure, Engineers wanting to elect one of their own, Jewish voters among whom Misha was very popular with, and Freshmen recruited by SA’s constituency engineers.

CalSERVE’s slate also contributed to Student Action’s apparent strength. They slated no one able to break into the “average student” voting block.

Also higher turnout elections are directly correlated to the number of serious Senate Candidates. This years Senate contest featured relatively few independents and as consequence it brought turnout down. The more Senators that seek election, it seems the worse SA execs do.

Still lots of praise should go out to Misha’s campaign, he led the Student Action execs to the finish line on his shoulders. His coattails elected them all.

What happened to BEARS-United? We got killed fair and square. The lack of an entire slate was crucial in the exec race and even more crucial in the senate contest.Email This Post!

Reverse Racism?

In response to his recent firing, ex-Vista CC President John Garmon is claiming that he is a victim of racial conspiracy against him by the Board of Trustees. Garmon is white, and five of the Trustees are African Americans.

The story is in the latest issue of the Berkeley Daily Planet.

My initial response is that this is a pretty weak and unsubstantial claim. Garmon's performance has been sub-par at best, as is attested to by members of Vista's staff. I don't see this going anywhere, but it will probably blow up some dust before it dies down.Email This Post!

But I'm not 21!

For those of you Berkeley denizens who are looking for a place for the elite to drink, here is the Berkeley Daily Planet's recommendations for the best pubs in Berkeley. Check it out if you, like me, feel the need to get plastered off your ass, and, unlike me, have too much money to spend.Email This Post!

AD Steve Gladstone Resigns

CalBears.com is reporting that Cal Athletic Director Steve Gladstone is resigning, presumably to concentrate on coaching men's crew, though probably not at Berkeley.

AD Gladstone is responsible for hiring several new coaches, three of which won Pac-10 Coach of the Year awards in their respective sports. In addition, many Cal sports have returned to national prominence under Gladstone's term, including men's track and football, teams that both received new coaches hired by Gladstone.

Hopefully, the search for a new athletic director isn't overshadowed and overlooked too much because of the debacle that has become of the chancelor-hiring process. It would be ridiculous to regress after all the progress that Cal Athletics has made.Email This Post!

(Quasi)Racist Speech and Speech Codes at Boalt

[Apologies for the long post. Free speech is something I feel strongly about. Also, numerous people have been writing about this issue, and I would like to gather all the available information together.]

Res Ipsa Loquitur has a post about a controversy I had been following that I thought had blown over. Petty Bourgeois writes about a recent incident at Boalt involving alleged racist speech by a guest lecturer and the University's reaction. That reaction includes:

(1) McGovern [the guest lecturer who made the allegedly racist comments] will not be asked back to Boalt

(2) New language prohibiting statements of this kind is currently being
drafted by the two minority students who were in the classroom at the time the
comments were made. This language will be put into the official
guidelines/policy for adjuncts and visiting lecturers.

Petty doesn't have the details on what occurred, but another website has more details.

Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy has a post that contained an e-mail from the Boalt Hall administration mentioning an incident of racist speech had occurred and that a policy for acceptable language in class would be drafted. That new policy is what Petty posted.

Eugene's opinion on the announced ban is mixed, but his rough conclusion is that:

I should mention that I'm not sure such a policy would be unconstitutional. When people are hired by the government to speak -- to teach some subject matter, for instance -- the government may be entitled to dictate to the employees what to say while speaking on the government's behalf. I think that as a matter of policy, it makes more sense to leave university teachers with a very great deal of discretion, and control them, when control is necessary, by moral suasion and social norms rather than by formal prohibitions. But my tentative view is that the Constitution does not demand that universities adopt such an approach, sound as the approach might be.

What is even more startling is a first hand account of the incident which was subsequently posted by Eugene after he was e-mailed by a Boalt student. Here is the relevant part of the e-mail:

It was NOT the sort of useless racism that one hears from people like neo-nazis and some of the more radical members of Mecha. The class was, in large part, supposed to be a role-playing sort of class whereby we, acting as attorneys, would have to learn to deal with clients and opposing parties (played by the instructors) while trying to formulate and execute a strategy for dealing with the client's problem. One of the things we had to learn to deal with were crabby, irritable, and imperfect clients. Thus, during one role-playing scenario (in fact, she made the supposedly racist comment while role-playing a negotiation with me in particular), our instructor, acting as the no-nonsense CFO of a small mid-western construction company, commented on the high quality of the company's product by saying that they didn't employ inferior illegal Mexican immigrant labor. That was it. Seriously. . . .

If this is the incident that prompted the speech code, then it seems like an obvious over-reaction. On the other hand, if Boalt is legally allowed to have a speech code (as Eugene argues), then it does not matter what bad reason they use to justify it.

One final note. Eugene has some comments on the wisdom of instituing such a policy:

If the vague phrase "racist, sexist or homophobic expressions" is defined as anything beyond slurs or utterly irrelevant asides, I mentioned, such a prohibition could seriously interfere with free and open class discussion. And if the speech here -- the speech that is prompting the policy -- is an example of the kind of "racist . . . expressions" that they're trying to suppress, then my fears seem in danger of being realized...



Finally, as I understand it from other sources at the law school, the details of the incident are apparently not being made clear to students (or at least weren't as of yesterday); all that many students know for sure about the incident is what the administration e-mail reported. So if my correspondent is right, the administration's actions portray a law school instructor as being racist even though that isn't so. That's hardly fair to the instructor, whose identity has likely leaked out, but it's also not good for minority students. If the administration's goal is to make "Boalt . . . be a place where all people feel themselves to be a part of the community," then exaggerated accounts that allege racism where there is none undermine the administration's own goals.

I oppose speech codes such as this, anyway. It is particularly troubling if the event which prompted Boalt to act was so innocuous, and that students were kept in the dark on what really occurred. If anyone attending Boalt has any more information on this, please send me an e-mail. Also, if anyone with legal expertise has an opinion on prohibitions on professors' conduct in the classroom; I would love to hear more about this. When I return to Berkeley I will follow this up by trying to meet with the professor whose class this occurred in, as well as the Boalt administrators who helped draft this policy.

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***ASUC Senate Results***
Here are the un-certified ASUC Senate results: (via the Daily Cal)

Lakshmi Sridaran - CalSERVE
Jenn Chon - Student Action
Billy Wang - Student Action
Brent Kastenbaum - CalSERVE
Manuel Buenrostro - Student Action
Jason Dixson - Student Action
Annalyn Terre - CalSERVE
Dena Takruri - CalSERVE
Chris Abad - APPLE-Engineering
Igor Tregub - APPLE-Engineering
Evan Bloom - Student Action
Dorie Perez - CalSERVE
Robert Shen - UNITE Greek
Yvette Felarca - Defend Affirmative Action Party (DAAP)
Jerico Lavarias - Student Action
Peter Chung - APPLE-Engineering
Noerena Limon - CalSERVE
Ben Narodick - SQUELCH!
Anil Daryani - Student Action
Adrienne Leong - UNITE Greek
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***Executive Office Election Results***
The elections council has finished counting the votes for Executive Office. Results are:
*President: Misha Leybovich (Student Action)
*Executive Vice President: Christine Lee (Student Action)
*Academic Affairs Vice President: Rocky Gade (Student Action)
*External Affairs Vice President: Liz Hall (CalSERVE)
*Student Advocate: Dave Madan

***Senate Election Results*** (Senator Narodick and Squelch! Party Owns!)
Student Action: 12
CalSERVE: 6
Squelch!: 1
DAAP: 1 (Pending Re-Qualififcation)
#21 Went to the INTERNATIONAL AND OUT-OF-STATE STUDENT PARTY, which will get the seat if DAAP is not re-instated. (*UPDATE* Or not. I wasn't sure how they would redo the results if DAAP is not allowed back in, and according to Mike Davis in comments, they would not simply give the seat to the 21st finisher.)
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Judicial Council Upholds DAAP DQ, But Orders Elections Council to Include DAAP in Vote Tabulation

This means the tabulation is still on for Tuesday at 7pm; however, results will not be certified by the council until outside litigation is resolved. Meaning: New executive officers won't be sworn in anytime soon.

The decision to order the EC to include DAAP in its tabulation is likely a result of the deal brokered at last Thursday's ASUC pow-wow between DAAP, the ASUC's lawyer, the J-Council Chair, and other important ASUC personages.

*Update* Executive positions will be certified. According to Mike Davis, in comments:

The execs will be certified, assuming DAAP doesn't win. The line in the decision talking about not certifying reads:

"This Council will not certify the complete results until such time as external litigation in the matter is resolved."

We'll certify partial results, ie the execs.

LaFata vs. DAAP II rehearing.docEmail This Post!