A bill passed by the ASSU Undergraduate Senate on Tuesday night will restrict the amount of money that can be used to campaign in class president elections, setting the cap at $400 per slate. The legislation is a scaled-down version of a bill presented last week, which previously included a $100 spending limit in Senate races.
Prior to voting unanimously in favor for the bill, many senators expressed concerns about treating Senate races in the same way as class president races. Senator-elect Daniel DeLong ’13 said he worried that the bill was centered too heavily around self-reporting.
“You are relying on the trust of politicians and I think that’s really problematic,” DeLong said.
In response, ASSU President Angelina Cardona ’11, who co-authored the bill, said she wouldn’t call the candidates politicians.
“I’d call them students,” Cardona said. “And that’s the Stanford nature even if you look at our Honor Code.”
But Cardona noted that she was open to other ideas about reforming Senate elections.
“I personally have never run for Senate,” she said. “I have run for class president. I have run for the Executive. So on this issue, I really defer to you guys.”
Senator Will Seaton ’13 suggested splitting the bill into two parts: one for the cap on class president races and another for the cap on Senate races.
Instead, Cardona motioned for a straw poll, which ended up showing that a majority of the Senators preferred creating a public financing option for Senate candidates instead of a spending cap. She decided to strike the language of the bill that referred to Senate races. The Senate passed the bill after this revision.
It also voted in favor of funding two student organizations, the Stanford Martial Arts Program and the ASSU Student Services Division, that were not placed on the spring ballot for special fees despite following the proper procedure.
“It really was a human error,” Cardona said. “If we did a special election, it would be unfair to isolate those groups in that way.”
Subsequently, the Senate confirmed two executive appointments: David Sunde ‘13 to the Executive Chair of Social Life and Senator Deepa Kannappan ‘13 to a position on the Constitutional Council.
If approved by the GSC, Kannappan will hand in her resignation to the Senate and replace Brianna Pang ’13, who resigned after being elected to the 13th Undergraduate Senate, as elected officials cannot serve concurrently in both positions.
“Deepa is extremely level-headed,” Cardona said. “I think she’s thoughtful. I think she looks at both sides of things and is also obviously brilliant. Needless to say, I think she will do a great job continuing her service there.”
She added that it was important to find a replacement quickly because the Council must rule on whether or not it will hear pending cases.
Stewart Macgregor-Dennis ’13 stepped down from his current Senate position as well. He will enter office as ASSU vice president on Saturday.
“The advice that we got when we were coming in was that it was going to be a battleground and you are going to have to fight,” Macgregor-Dennis said. “Then it turns out that 99.5 percent of the decisions we made were in consensus. There were really few [cases] where there’s been a lot of controversy.”
“In my opinion, we have been a productive Senate,” he added. “I think we’ve been a successful one. I am excited that we are bringing Stanford student government up to the point where everything else at Stanford is–where we are one of the top in the nation.”