I received an interesting email from a friend. It was commentary about the recent Judicial Council case against DAAP that was sent out to the Berkeley BAMN email list. I put the complete version below interspersed with a few comments. If you want an alternative view so you can assess the validity of their statements see Beetle’s posts about DAAP.

This is a satire about the recent ASUC Judicial Council
Shenanigans, written by the Defend Affirmative Action Party.

- Yvette Felarca, BAMN Northern California coordinator
(Title for identification purposes only)

======================================
Court of the Absurd – cancel the “ASUC judicial council
procedures” sock-puppet theater for good.
======================================

Friends, Californians, Enemies – let us not suffer through
sock-puppet theater next election season – let us drag the
name of our school and student body through the fetid morass
of stupid election charges no longer!

We should not forget how DAAP dragged the name of our school and $15,000 of student fees through a “fetid morass” two years ago.

Facing two charges – ostensibly brought for violation of the
election rules – has forced our party to think once again
about the arbitrary and truly stupid character of the post-
election tradition at Cal of “ASUC judicial council
procedures.” It is a simple and universally known fact that
ASUC elections are fair – the candidates who get the votes
win the seats.

Both of the circus-worthy charges that our party faced have
been dismissed – limping out of existence just as
pathetically and honorlessly as they came about. The first
was dropped when the “charging party” was 49 minutes late for
the hearing. Apparently this “charging party” has failed to
appear a number of times this judicial procedures season.

It is really the story of the second charge whose full
telling is deserved. It is our hope that, next, election we
can convince the three branches of student government not to
debase themselves, to set aside the clown suits and cancel
the “judicial procedures” sock-puppet theater for good, out
of embarrassment, self respect, or maybe because one or two
democratic principles survive - starved and outcast though
they may be.

Perhaps the finest example of the Senate debasing itself this past year was the filing of impeachment charges (by DAAP Seantor Dimitri Garcia among others) against Judicial Council Chair Sonya Banerjee. Coverage of this from the Patriot blog in exile here and Beetle here. Canceling out the judicial procedures would make the government run easier, since it would then have two and not three branches.

The second charge against DAAP was for a campaign phone call
into a dorm room. This action was alleged to have violated
the prohibition on “campaigning in the dorm.” The stupidity
of this charge, the fact that the election rule plainly is
intended to prohibit the physical presence of campaigners was
not enough to cancel the sock-puppet theater date. The fact
that the case would be moot - DAAP did not win an ASUC seat -
that was not enough. The fact that if the Judicial Council
upheld the charge it would prohibit the use of all modern
means of communication in ASUC elections was not enough. The
“charging party” did not have a single witness - no matter! -
the sock-puppet theater show must go on!

If anyone bothered to read 12.3 of the elections bylaw, the campaigning in the dorms prohibition applies to more then just a campaigner.

Due Process had a small, tragic part in the sock-puppet play;
it was not a speaking part and died early. During the two
hours of hearing in which pre-oral argument motions were
heard, no standard of the Judicial Rules of Procedure was
above summary elimination by the Judicial Council. The
problems went beyond just trampling the protections enshrined
in the stone tablets of the Judicial Rules of Procedure.
Basic democratic standards that have been in place in more or
less every society in the world for hundreds of years were
casually tossed aside by the Judicial Council in a fog of
blissful ignorance. Just when the unbridled foolishness of
the hearing had lost its novelty and was becoming genuinely
annoying, the sock-puppet theater gods intervened with
redemptive generosity.

The hearing was cut short.

Apparently the stone tablets of judicial procedure that had
been up on the ASUC website for some time were outdated. A
new hearing, “starting again” was set for several days later
(this time on the basis of the “new, improved JRP”) despite
no allowance for this procedure in the Judicial Rules of
Procedure themselves.

DAAP’s lawyer got involved and threatened to sue regardless of the outcome of the case. The word “intimidation” is used in the Daily Cal article.

In the intervening days a pretext was contrived as a face-
saving device to extricate the “charging party” from the
hopeless idiocy of the judicial procedure. It was
“discovered” by the “charging party” that the voice message
left on their dorm phone did not have a date.

Thus the tragic/comic sock-puppet theater one-act came to an
embarrassing, sputtering, pathetic end.

- Defend Affirmative Action Party (DAAP)

The text goes wrong in many places. This is where Beetle can do a great section by section analysis. Again, I will refer everyone to Beetle’s entries that include DAAP. The further back you read, the more you will be enlightened.

I am glad to know we will not be deprived of entertainment next year just because DAAP no longer has a senate seat.