Thursday, October 12th 2006
President Wants Payment for Shredding the Constitution
If you read any stuff on Beetle or Jeremy Koo both of which you should read because they are great, then you would have head about the latest from the ASUC. If you read the Daily Cal yesterday, you would be completely clueless. Next week the ASUC Senate will consider a bill that would pay $22,679 in legal fees for President Oren Gabriel.
The only good news is if you are doing any building projects Student Action has plenty of tools lying around. Student Action controls four of the five executive offices and 12 of the 20 senate seats. Every Student Action Senator and two from other parties support this bill.
If the audacity of this criminal action is not apparent, let me elaborate.
First, Gabriel has no grounds to claim he was acting for the association; the case is titled Gabriel v. Associated Students of the University of California. Gabriel chose to seek action against individual members of the Judicial Council for his own personal gain.
According to the Daily Cal:
Gabriel, however, was not an official within the association at the time he filed the case, as his term as senator had expired and his presidential term had not yet been confirmed.
First, his term as senator was still valid as senators do not take office until the fall. Second, Gabriel was disqualified from the presidential race for the lies of his spokesperson and Student Action Party Chair Suken Vakil.
Second, the case Gabriel brought was to stop the Judicial Council from acting in its constitutional authority. After J-council had disqualified Gabriel along with the entire Student Action Executive Slate the members of Student Action refused to participate in the resolution process within the ASUC. In an attempt to stop further hearings Gabriel took the matter to Alameda County. Only after his request was denied did the disqualified Student Action Executives suddenly become interested in participating in the appeal of the case before the J-Council.
From the Daily Cal again:
“The Judicial Council was violating the ASUC bylaws and their own rules of procedure so in order to make sure that the will of the students was followed, it was necessary to hire legal counsel,” Gabriel said.
I think if Gabriel wanted to follow the will of students he would have appeared and explained himself before the students of the Judicial Council prior to taking them to court. I wrote an op-ed for the Daily Cal over the summer that dealt with this situation.
To understand all the background I made a timeline for the last issue of The Patriot. Jeremy Koo’s impressive timeline is also helpful.
If you are mad you should contact the 13 Senators that have betrayed you. If you voted for Dmitri Garcia of the Defend Affirmative Action Party then you probably condone shakedowns of ASUC funds for unfounded legal fee payments. Background on BAMN’s extortion of $15,000 here.
If you have any questions about this case or any of what Student Action did over the summer ask away, especially if you are new to the blog or were away over the summer.
Since Calstuff is currently dead, I invite all the anonymous SA supporting commenters to come here and tell me I am wrong.
lower text book prices? no
In n’Out on campus? no
paying back Student Action legal fees!
Student Action: every student. every year.
Comment by Ben Chapman — 10/12/2006 @ 8:38 am
haha i was laughing out loud as i read the title to this post. cheers chris.
thank god my student fees won’t be going to this fraudulent payout.
Comment by bobby gregg — 10/12/2006 @ 10:54 am
It’s very sad that there are two conservative senators that are serving under SA in the senate and they support a bill that would waste student’s fees in such a way. It goes against what we as fiscal conservatives stand for. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Student Action: Every Student, Every Student’s Fees!
Comment by Anonymous — 10/15/2006 @ 11:45 pm
Why should the ASUC refuse to use student funds to pay Oren Gabriel’s legal fees if it decided to pay for BAMN’s $15,000 legal fees? Shouldn’t there be consistency? This sounds totally unfair to me.
Comment by Kerry — 10/16/2006 @ 2:26 pm
Because BAMN was suing the ASUC, and the ASUC decided to settle, while Oren isn’t suing, maybe?
Comment by Beetle — 10/16/2006 @ 2:41 pm
I don’t know the details of either case, I will begin by saying that. However, from what I read here, Oren did file a suit against the ASUC in a case titled ‘Gabriel v. Associated Students of the University of California.’ My point is that he was likely acting out of what he thought was right. You have no idea what his motive was, although it was written here that it was for personal gain. If he has legal fees as a result of challenging the ASUC, I think that’s justified. $22,679 is a whole lot of money and I can’t imagine a college student spending that much personally without truly believing that he was doing the right thing and would be compensated for it. I don’t like the ASUC at all and I think it’s all a waste of money to begin with. However, the ASUC can’t compensate some people and not others for legal fees related to challenging the ASUC. It’s not fair, and it’s too high a sum of money. I don’t know Oren Gabriel but I am on his side. We’re all paying for the ASUC to ‘improve student life’ at Berkeley, and if the costs of participating in the ASUC are this high then no one would take any risks. In other words, no one would try to do the right thing and improve student life if they knew that challenging the ASUC would result in thousands and thousands of dollars in personal expense. I believe that the ASUC already wastes our student fees, and I don’t think that it’s any more wasteful than anything else to cover the legal expenses of a student who challenges the student government. Even if you disagree with his challenge, you have to admit that he’s just a student and doesn’t have the resources to pay legal fees like that– and you can’t say that he would have gone forward with any sort of a challenge if he knew that he was going to have to pay out of his own pocket.
Comment by Kerry — 10/16/2006 @ 2:59 pm
I challenged the ASUC for a couple bucks in copies. No tens of thousands of dollars worth of lawyers required.
I agree that he wouldn’t have gone forward with his challenge if he thought he had to pay for it, and that as a result he shouldn’t have made that challenge, because it was completely unnecessary, and he would’ve ended up president regardless of whether he sued the ASUC or not. Like you said, you don’t know what you’re talking about, so maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to approve tossing out $22,000 of everyone else’s money because you feel sorry for someone.
Comment by Beetle — 10/16/2006 @ 3:14 pm
Different types of challenges require different levels of expenditure. His type of challenge required lawyers, yours didn’t. I pay student fees as well, so it’s not just “everyone else’s money”– it’s mine too. And I stand by what I wrote. I don’t need to know the details to know that the ASUC is corrupt and wasteful, and it often needs to be challenged by students. It’s not so much about feeling sorry for him (although I do feel sorry for him)– it’s about the fact that I think students should be given the resources to challenge the ASUC. If the ASUC can’t handle covering legal fees of its challengers, then it shouldn’t exist. It’s an organization of students, and students (who have no money) can’t be expected to personally pay for anything (outside of campaigning) related to the ASUC. That’s my opinion, and I have nothing else really to say on this subject.
Comment by Kerry — 10/16/2006 @ 3:23 pm
No, that’s my point: Oren’s expenditures didn’t need lawyers. His lawyers did nothing for him. He won because the internal rules of the ASUC said he needed to win, not because lawyers proved anything.
By the way, the corruption you talk about occurs because of people like Oren, and because they can sue to get their way whenever they have a problem. He wasn’t a great warrior standing up to the evils of the all-powerful ASUC. People like him are the ASUC, and what brings it to its present state.
If you want to pay 22,679/sizeofstudentbody dollars to cover Oren’s legal fees, be my guest. Beyond that, it’s other people’s money.
Comment by Beetle — 10/16/2006 @ 3:28 pm
Well I guess I do have something else to say here actually. First of all, maybe the concept that “it’s other people’s money” should be taken to heart, because there are seemingly very few students on this campus who feel that the ASUC is a productive use of our student funds. If the ASUC can waste money on other things, then I think it’s justified that it should consider wasting money on paying legal fees such as this. Secondly and more importantly, perhaps Oren thought that the fact that the ASUC paid off BAMN’s legal fees was an indicator that he wouldn’t have to pay his own legal fees. Since you acknowledge that Oren was probably unaware that he there was even the possibility that he would have to pay these legal fees himself, maybe the answer to all this is to have a clear and consistent ASUC policy regarding legal fees of students who challenge the ASUC. If such a policy was in place, then maybe ‘frivolous’ legal proceedings (as you would call Oren’s lawsuit) would never go forward. Maybe people would be extra careful in choosing to hire lawyers if they knew that they would have to pay out of their own pockets. Instead of trying to destroy this guy’s life (and yes, attaching $22,679 to a student’s debt is devastating), maybe you all should call for the ASUC to clarify what it will and what it won’t cover. You try to sound very ‘principled’ here but it really angers me that you acknowledge that Oren was unaware that he’d have to pay $22,679 by himself and yet you still claim that the ASUC should not even consider passing a bill in which it would pay for his legal fees. This is a fellow student we’re talking about, and it sounds like you all really want to bring this guy down and ruin his life– and I do believe he acted in what he thought was the interests of students. That’s the whole point of the ASUC– improving the lives of students. If people think the ASUC shouldn’t cover the legal fees of its challengers, then that needs to be clarified and situations of this kind will then no longer arise. All I’m saying is that this is an incidence of misunderstanding, and this guy’s life doesn’t deserve to be ruined as a result of the ASUC’s lack of consistency and clarity. Okay now I really think that I’ve said all that I have to say, so goodbye.
Comment by Kerry — 10/16/2006 @ 4:07 pm
Oren isn’t as resourceless as you seem to think. $22,000 isn’t right from his pocket.
He was aware that he’d have to pay a crapload of money to lawyers, he was just counting on us to cover for him, because he thought he would have enough control in the Senate to get them to pay him money. The fact that he won his Judicial council hearing actually worked against him, because without a lawsuit, there’s no settlement for SA tools to approve.
In any case, investing in the infrastructure for robbery with the assumption that the robbery would be successful does not, to me, seem to be sufficient reason to offer to pay the robber’s expenses.
Comment by Beetle — 10/16/2006 @ 4:36 pm
A few general comments:
1)If Gabriel was acting in the best interest of students, why would he and all Student Action members refuse to participate in the Judicial Council appeal process?
2)While some people might be out to get Gabriel in this case, I can only say I am not. I am out to stop people who profess to care about the ASUC from blatantly lying and disrespecting its due process.
3)For the record, while I think the final payout in the BAMN case was justified (though I don’t know all the details), the led up to the settlement saw DAAP mocking the judicial procedure in the ASUC.
4)A number of the people involved are from wealthy families. I have heard one of the executive candidates spent around $5,000 on campaigns, even if the bylaw limit is $1,000.
Comment by Chris Page — 10/16/2006 @ 6:29 pm
“I don’t need to know the details to know that the ASUC is corrupt and wasteful, and it often needs to be challenged by students.”
You are right, and that’s why the Judicial Council exists. You can submit a charge sheet on the 4th floor of Eschleman for guess how much?? FREE!
Comment by bobby gregg — 10/16/2006 @ 7:07 pm
Well, technically there’s the cost of the copy… but I don’t recall ever filing my charge sheets in hardcopy. I guess that was probably a violation of the JRPs. But then, so is lying, and that managed to win $22,000 or so from the ASUC, so I don’t feel like it’s too unfair.
Comment by Beetle — 10/16/2006 @ 8:06 pm
I don’t think people want to ruin his life. I think people wish he isn’t compensated, but have no personal vendetta.
Comment by David — 10/17/2006 @ 12:09 am
Where can I find the Judicial Council rulings? I’ve been poking around ASUCB’s website, but can’t find them. I would very much be interested in reading what they had to say, and why they then changed their mind.
Comment by Joe@Davis — 10/18/2006 @ 1:10 pm
http://asuc.org/offices/index.php?s=jc
the decisions of interest are the first three under Recent Documents
Comment by bobby gregg — 10/18/2006 @ 5:37 pm