A friend and fellow blogger came across an interesting article from The Jewish News Weekly. It is a piece about ASUC President Oren Gabriel and his brother Jesse who held the position a few years ago.

“I don’t want to sound conceited, but the expectations are high. Four other executives and 12 members of the senate [out of 20] are from the same party. We’ll work together and form a cohesive and effective government,” said Oren.

As far as the four other executives go, unless he miscounted at least we all know the Student Advocate is officially an SA member. The government better be cohesive with so many from Student Action around. If by effective he means someone can let a student group into Eshleman so they can get their table to register voters at Caltopia, it has not happened yet.

My expectations for the ASUC are not too high. There is a good chance more bills will get passed this year with less energy going into internal fighting and the imposing SA voting block. However I don’t think this will mean more good from the ASUC.

If Student Action wants to shatter my expectations they can:

1. Revise election bylaws so issues that came up this summer don’t reoccur.
2. Stop putting on executive office projects on campus and give the money to student groups or fund the Student Advocate Office better.
3. Get a plan to rebuild the death trap called Eshleman Hall.
4. Do something worthy of having 600 interns or cut the number of interns.
5. Update the website.
6. Stop campus fees (RSF, Class Pass, Health Center) that rip students off.
7. Get a sensable GA MOU.
8. Finish Senate meetings in three hours or get webcasting wtih sound that works.

It will be a miralce if two of these are done consistantly through the year.

However there are other issues on their mind. In the words of External Affairs Vice President Jason Chu from the Daily Cal

As the five executives we have developed a six- prong plan to address a broad range of goals within our own offices, specifically diversity, sustainability, development of Lower Sproul, safety, Cal traditions-developing a new Cal tradition each year-and technology. Regardless of political party, these issues are important to all students.

These issues are not important to me. I want my student fee to fund student groups. Beetle has good comments about these goals.

Lower Sproul development would be nice. To be honest, The Jewish News Weekly described it best as “a long-term goal that could stretch to the Oren Gabriel Jr. presidency.”

To be fair they have tried to establish one new Cal tradition. That would be lying in front of the Judicial Council and then taking its individual members to court for enforcing the rules.