Former ASUO Senator Dallas Brown has filed a grievance alleging that Senate President Sara Hamilton improperly allowed PFC members to vote to approve their budget benchmarks, according to ‘Ol Dirty. The story goes on to say that Hamilton denies the allegations, because the wording of the rules in question is such that there is no clear prohibition of Senators voting on the benchmarks for their respective committees. If this position is upheld in the Con Court, the rule should be changed.

Hamilton admits that it is “traditional” for Senators to abstain from votes on their respective committees benchmarks, and just two short weeks ago, ADFC Senators all abstained from voting on the ADFC benchmark. I know this, because when Senator Guerra got pissed about the PFC’s low funding levels, and made a motion to raid the ADFC benchmark which had already been approved, he needed to get a second from someone who had voted nay or abstained. No one voted against that benchmark, and yet for some reason all of the ADFC Senators had abstained. Senator Hamilton was the only other abstention on that vote, and she seconded Guerra’s motion, allowing the five-percenters to waste more of the Senates time and good will. Hamilton should smell the coffee here, and realize that the PFC is playing by different rules than the ADFC is, and that they are doing so based on narrow-minded self interest (hence, the crying, PFC raid, etc). If the Con Court can’t clarify this rule, a Senator or the Executive certainly should, and should do so in a way that clearly prevents the conflicts of interest which have plagued the Senate for too long.

**UPDATE**

The Emerald is reporting that the Constitutional Court “requires additional information before the judicial branch of government will consider it.”  No word yet on what information it might need, or whether Dallas plans on proceeding.  It appears that this grievance has not exactly struck fear into the hearts of student leaders, but that hardly seems the point… Senators should want this rule clarified, and should move to clarify it  with a Senate bill. Either way, Dallas has assumed a vital role in the ASUO scene, namely that of the student watchdog. It is safe to say that, at this point, he has already had more impact on the Senate this year than many sitting Senators themselves. More students should be as engaged and curious as he.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 20th, 2006 at 13:22 by Niedermeyer and is filed under ASUO, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.