The Associated Students 75th Senate did not hold an official meeting on May 14, due to only 12 out of 24 senators being present at the meeting.
The A.S. 75th Senate did not hold an official meeting due to only 12 out of 24 Senators being present at the meeting. Shengyu Zhang / Daily Nexus
After 30 minutes of waiting for the meeting to begin, Internal Vice President and fourth-year art major Açúcar Pinto dismissed the meeting as they were unable to meet the required quorum of 50%+1 senators and therefore couldn’t track meeting minutes. However, the Senate still allowed for an unofficial public comment.
Many people left after hearing that public comment wouldn’t count in the meeting minutes, and therefore wouldn’t be valid. Senator and fourth-year economics and communication double major Taylor Iden said people could email their statement to the Senate or wait until the next meeting.
Two students stayed to give an unofficial public comment — Charlie Jyu, a fourth-year computer science major, who had qualms with the difficulties of accessing senate meeting minutes, and Ryan Whitaker, a fourth-year communication major who spoke on behalf of the Transfer Student Alliance (TSA) asking the Senate to incorporate transfer students more within campus.
While Jyu is not apart of any Associated Students (A.S.) organization and is just a “voter trying to find more information,” he said that just an hour before the meeting he had asked the A.S. Trans & Queer Commission (TQC) for their information on expenditures and meeting minutes but was told that was “up to [the Senate].” He said all meeting minutes and expenditures were “nowhere to be found” on their website and was asking what is and isn’t considered private information.
Associate Director of Technology & Strategic Communication of A.S. Sean Lieberman clarified that each commission is “responsible for putting up their minutes.” While they are trying to make the process “more fluid and updated,” the information is currently only available via a Google Drive, which is unavailable to the public.
Lieberman explained that in order for meeting minutes to be accessible through the Judicial Council (JC) website, the commission needs to submit the minutes to the Senate for them to be approved and then be accessible on the website. He said they are working to improve this process but still need to hire a “web-person specifically dedicated to this purpose.”
Following Jyu’s comment, Whitaker explained that as a co-chair of the TSA, he wants the Senate to “think a little bit more about transfer students.” He explained that, as they take up a third of the undergraduate student population, he says there’s “been a noticeable lack” of resources for transfer students and getting the TSA “up and running again” due to a “lack of A.S. help.”
“My goal here is that next year you guys have a little bit more thought process behind [transfer students], because it’s really lacking, and I just want it to be better for transfer students,” Whitaker said. “We’re here for two years. We don’t have much time.”
Pinto responded by saying that as a transfer student themself, they understand Whitaker’s frustrations. Pinto noted that they’ve tried getting their coordinators to create a “formal transition doc” to help “bridge those connections.” They also mentioned trying to give transfers more seats in the Senate during their winter special election, which didn’t pass.
Whitaker also expressed difficulties in understanding the “A.S. process” regarding funding as a transfer student, given their limited time on campus. He said that, while the TSA is going to have $15,000 in funds for the next academic year, they haven’t “touched those funds,” not because of an unwillingness to hold events but because of their lack of understanding of the A.S. process.
“That’s why we can’t really utilize that money, because we just don’t know what’s going on,” Whitaker said.
Senator and second-year global studies major Leah Khorsandi posed the idea of creating a “training document” for the TSA to help transfer students adjust to A.S.
Pinto believes the lack of senators present at the meeting was due to “a myriad of reasons,” such as people calling in sick, being “swamped with midterms” and an overall dissatisfaction with the JC cases against multiple senators, including Pinto themself.
“In terms of the JC cases, a lot of people have been getting back to me saying that they are really disappointed at how disempowering this moment is, how they feel like the Attorney General has been pressing a personal agenda,” Pinto said. “That’s been making a lot of people feel kind of uneasy about this space.”
A version of this article appeared on p. 3 of the May 22, 2025 edition of the Daily Nexus.
