PFC ya!
The ASUO Constitution Court, ruling on a petition alleging defiant violations of viewpoint neutrality during the budget proceedings of a certain student magazine, has completely and finally relieved Programs Finance Committee members Mason Quiroz and Eden Cortez of their student government duties. Quoth the Court:
Mason L. Quiroz is found to have acted in willful defiance of viewpoint neutrality as outlined in Rosenberg {sic} and Southworth and the ASUO Constitution. As a proper remedy, Mason L. Quiroz is hereby removed from the Program Finance Committee to be effective immediately.
Ditto Cortez. It should be noted that although the PFC’s business is largely done for the year, this was no empty act of removal. Cortez also lost his seat on the Senate, which has yet to touch this year’s budget. And Quiroz? He held a two-year term on the PFC, now terminated before one year’s time. I suppose now he’s free to do . . . whatever it is he does when he’s not at work.
And now I think we can stop talking about this.
UPDATE 3/8: We can’t stop talking about this yet. Eden Cortez is apparently challenging the ruling against him because it is based entirely upon words he didn’t exactly say.
In my petition to the ASUO Con Court, I alleged the following about Eden Cortez:
During the Oregon Commentator’s Feb. 1 budget hearing, PFC member CORTEZ repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to consider the Commentator’s published content in making decisions about whether to pass our Mission and Goals Statement. All of his statements are available as a public record, but one statement in particular stands out in flagrant defiance of CORTEZ’s legal responsibility to allocate funds in a viewpoint-neutral manner under the constitutional rule announced in Rosenberger and clarified in Southworth. Responding to ASUO Executive Adam Petkun’s statement that the PFC could not consider the Commentator’s content at a budget hearing, CORTEZ said, in effect, “Of course we can look at content in determining a group’s value. Otherwise this job could be done by robots.”
(Emphases added.)
As you can see, my petition did not allege the “robots” quote as being exact, but rather as the essential effect of Cortez’s words, and I took pains to direct the Con Court to review the public record itself.
It appears that the Con Court did not do so, and treated the quote in my petition as a verbatim factual allegation. Here’s a quote from the Court’s decision:
On February 1st, the Program Finance Committee met to recall and rehear the Mission and Goals of the Oregon Commentator. At the meeting, Cortez made the following public statement: “Of course we can look at content in determining a group’s value. Otherwise this job could be done by robots.”
Eden Cortez voted against the motion to approve the Mission and Goals of the Oregon Commentator.
(Emphasis added.)
This lack of follow-through by the Court is unfortunate, particularly if it gives Cortez enough grounds to successfully challenge his removal. I never alleged the quote to be verbatim public record, as the Court treated it, and had the Court actually gone and reviewed the public record of our Feb. 1 budget hearing, it would have found ample defiance of viewpoint neutrality on Cortez’s part, even if the exact words I alleged were never put together in that order. That the Court instead entirely based its ruling on an inaccurate quote is disappointing. Cortez does not deserve to get out of this with a job.
