By Connie Lee, Mar. 15, 2022
During the March 10 ASI Board of Directors meeting, ASI Vice President Derek Sweem announced that elections committee member Victoria Flores, a political science student, was promoted to be the new ASI elections chair after showing outstanding initiative within the committee.
Flores was appointed swiftly by ASI President Prabhat Jammalamadaka with ASI elections approaching in April.
“The previous elections chair resigned the day after the ASI meeting on Feb. 24, so at that point in time I had to do an emergency appointment due to it being a high-profile committee,” said Jammalamadaka to The Poly Post. “I did it out of own discretion to appoint Victoria.”
Flores’ appointment comes after Jammalamadaka wrote a recommendation to the board alleging the previous elections chair, Samuel Woulfe, was at times uncommunicative via email and unprepared for upcoming election tasks.
ASI elections are held annually during the spring semester with 14 positions that students can be elected to by the student body. The positions include ASI president; ASI vice president; senators to represent CPP’s eight colleges: Don B. Huntley College of Agriculture, College of Education and Integrative Studies, College of Engineering, College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences, College of Environmental Design and College of Science; and four senators to represent each council: Student Interest Council, Greek Council, Inter-Hall Council and Multicultural Council.
The candidate eligibility list will be posted between March 14-18 which will display the candidates running for ASI elected positions. Campaigning for elected applicants will start at 7 a.m. on March 21 and ASI will host a candidate meet and greet on April 5 from noon to 1 p.m.
The requirements to run for an ASI position include having a 2.0 GPA or higher, earning a minimum of six total semester units and being in good standing with the Office of Student Conduct and Integrity.
MyBar will host online voting beginning April 11 at 7 a.m. and ending April 14 at 7 p.m.
In other business, the board approved proposed changes to ASI bylaws via a 9-0 vote.
ASI Attorney General Mia discussed some of the by-laws’ proposed changes, which include changing the terminology of disability to ability, providing more details on ASI positions, specifying the ASI senator pro tempore to step in for ASI president if both the president and vice president are absent, have the joint budget committee as a new standing committee and having a majority vote for elected student leaders.
During the meeting, ASI CFO Carol Lee proposed changes to ASI’s Reserves Policy. The purpose and policy statement to the changes include needing to be able to use reserves for planned deficits, to avoid having a balance without designated purposes and separate procedures from the policy.
Associate Director of Campus Recreation Programs Kaycee Martin presented ASI Campus Recreation’s pricing model proposals to the board.
“To complement the program pricing, we are proposing a program credit concept,” said Martin during the meeting. “So even though with the program pricing we want to offer programs at a lowest cost as we can, there’s still the potential that if there’s any cost there may be students who cannot afford those programs.”
The credit program will seek to increase access to maximize student participation in programs
The proposal by Martin and her team is to implement pilot programs for $20 program credits per term for students during the 2022-23 school year for fee-assessed students to use for different campus recreation programs.
Campus Recreation programs include workshops, intramural sports leagues, competitions, clinics, specialized training in private swim lessons, masters swim and personal training, group fitness, off-campus trips, certifications and youth programs.
The ASI Board of Directors is expected to vote on the proposals for ASI Reserves Policy and Campus Recreation Pricing initiatives next meeting.
In her report to the board, Associate Director for Student Government Ashley Joseph announced that the student government is having a menstrual project to give out free menstrual products in partnership with The Poly Pantry with the help of Officer of Internal Affairs Aliza Ortega, Student Government Student Office Assistant Crystal Mather along with some of the ASI student leaders.
The student leaders have dispersed and delivered over 500 cases in various menstrual products across CPP that was donated this past semester. Each of the boxes that were donated include around 350 individual menstrual products to use.
ASI meeting agendas and minutes can be found on ASI’s website. The next ASI Board of Directors Meeting will be held March 17.