The UC San Diego Associated Students’ Week 6 meeting featured a resolution vote and a special presentation voicing the concerns and safety of Jewish students on campus, alongside a brief discussion concerning parking spots. Voting on the 2023-24 A.S. budgets took place during the second half of the eight-hour meeting.
After public input, Senator Elizabeth Lopez and Senator Marysol Valdez sponsored a discussion item, “Parking Issues Around Campus,” a continuation from last week’s meeting regarding the recent changes to on-campus parking allocations. Senator Lopez opened the discussion by saying that it was “not acceptable to be given a two-day notice that these parking spaces were changed.”
A.S. President George Chi Ioi Lo informed listeners that, per his meeting with Transportation Director Josh Kavanagh, “most parking spots have been converted to parking spot ‘A’ because faculties were complaining saying that they cannot get to classes on time.”
“Some parking spots were also converted to ‘SR,’ which is Student Resident,” Lo explained. “Most students are commuting students that may not come to class every day, based on the statistics that most students only come to campus 2-3 times a week.”
This discussion concluded with Senator Hannah Nguyen’s remarks on A.S.’s potential collaboration with the Triton Commuter Club, an on-campus program that seeks to “give students who are commuters incentives [to not drive to campus],” reducing the demand for on-campus spots.
The meeting featured a special presentation inspired by the Anti-Defamation League and Hillel International curriculum, titled “Understanding antisemitism/Jew-Hatred on Campus.” The presenters urged the Senate to vote “yes” on Senator Ivan J. Ramirez and Senator Verina Leung’s Resolution Condemning Jew-Hatred and Committing to Fair and Equal Representation of the Jewish Community at UC San Diego. The presentation reported statistics comparing the United States Jewish population and rates of religious hate crimes, as well as statistics showing historical trends of antisemitism. This information was then connected to the need to protect the collective well-being of the Jewish population at UCSD.
Continuing this conversation with the public, the A.S. Senate meeting contained an action item on a previous resolution to condemn antisemitism on campus. The discussion on this item came after the A.S. put out a statement in support of a Students for Justice in Palestine statement saying that “Israeli officials have called for the genocide of Palestinians,” while condemning Islamophobia.
Ramirez did not revoke approval of the SJP statement, but rather apologized for the manner in which it was approved and for not “taking more time to review it,” in addition to discussing possibly having A.S. release a future statement.
“We’ve endorsed an SJP letter, we can now have the opportunity in front of us to condemn Jew-hatred, and then in a future meeting, we’ll have the opportunity to take a more holistic resolution that considers both antisemitism, Jew-hatred, and Islamophobia,” Ramirez said.
Senator Safiya Siddiq added that “they’ve all experienced hatred on this campus.”
“We should support both sides, which is our duty as student representatives,” Siddiq said.
After a few edits to the original resolution and public input from members of the community, the Senate passed the resolution in a 21-1-5 vote.
In the second half of the meeting, conducted entirely over Zoom, A.S. voted on their office budget allocations. The budget for the Office of the President was passed 19-0-9, amounting to $83,900 allocated for the academic year, while the budget for the Office of the Executive Vice President was not voted on.
The Office of College Affairs budget was passed in an 11-6-8 vote after amendments by the Senate to change the amount of programming funding coming from the Mandate Reserves. The final budget came out to $174,972.
Lastly, the Office of Food and Housing Resources and Office of Environmental Justice Affairs’ budgets were decided at $210,128 and $5,000, respectively.
A.S. did not vote on the Office of Equity, Diversion, and Inclusion’s budget, and the meeting was recessed until Tuesday, Nov. 14, at 6 p.m., during Week 7, when budget discussion is set to resume.
Editor’s Note: On Nov 13, 10:21 a.m., the article was updated to correct a mistake on whether or not the A.S. senate had voted on the budget for the Office of the Executive Vice President.
