ASG Finalizes Stance on Recordings

Students must notify senate to create their own recordingEmma Pollans and Celia MartinezAssociate Reporters April 26, 2018With the gavel in hand and the name plaques in place, the Associated Student Government (ASG) showed it does not have time to mess around.During their Week Three meeting, they discussed transportation in the Bay Area, considered potential Registered Student Organizations (RSOs), successfully passed a new recording bylaw and discussed matters of sustainability on campus.At the start of the meeting Matt Quevedo from the Silicon Valley Leadership Group gave a presentation in which he asked for Senate to endorse Regional Measure 3. The $4.5 billion transportation bill seeks to expand public transportation in the Bay Area, most notably BART and CalTrain. If passed, this measure will result in a gradual increase in bridge tolls on all local state-owned bridges. The measure is set to appear on the 2018 June ballot. Senate will decide in the coming weeks on whether they will endorse Regional Measure 3.Six clubs on campus gave presentations at this week’s ASG meeting in hopes of gaining RSO status. These clubs included Fight to End Animal Torture, or F.E.A.T; SCU Tap Club; Active Minds, whose goal is to spread advocacy, awareness and education of mental health on college campuses; CHAARG, a fitness club to motivate and inspire students to achieve their fitness goals; PERIOD., dedicated to providing feminine hygiene products to local homeless populations and the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Club. Active Minds, CHAARG and PERIOD. are national organizations.At-large sophomore senator Bjorn Thyrring and first-year senator Sahil Sagar presented the final version of the new recording bylaws. These require that students submit a notification to the Senate Chair, through a Google Form, by the start of the meeting if they wish to create their own recording. Failure to do so will result in loss of recording privileges for the rest of the academic school year.ASG will now create their own video recordings of all meetings and have them uploaded to a Santa Clara-hosted website, unedited with a watermark. Each recording will replace the previous one, where the older videos of past meetings will be archived on a Google Drive folder. University groups may also request to use an ASG recording for their own official publications, provided the request is approved with a super majority vote from the Senate.This final version was voted on and passed by the Senate and will take effect fall quarter of 2018. Previously, ASG had a ban on all recordings during Senate meetings.Sophomore senator Helen Kassa and first-year senator Ciara Moezidis presented a resolution encouraging Santa Clara to commit to the piloting of a Smart Pass program, allowing Santa Clara students to ride Valley Transportation Association (VTA) buses for a reduced price. The aim of this program is to help promote the use of public transportation and sustainability on campus.The next Senate meeting will be at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 26 in the California Mission Room.Contact Emma Pollans at epollans@scu.edu and Celia Martinez at c4martinez@scu.edu or call (408) 554-4852.