AS Senate Recap – 4/30/25
This recap first appeared in the May 5 edition of the KCSB News Weekly Newsletter.
The AS Senate is a group of elected student representatives which serves as the policy-making body of Associated Students. Every Wednesday at 6:30 PM, the AS Senate convenes to pass bills and resolutions, hear reports from Boards, Committees, and Units (BCUs), and hold public forum.
KCSB’s Joyce Chi summarizes their most recent meeting on April 30, 2025.
Neo Harter and Ali Shahid present the results of a survey on Senate perception and the local student housing crisis.
It’s for real: the Spring General Election is now underway. Voting on candidates and fee initiatives for campus organizations (including KCSB 🙏) is now open on vote.as.ucsb.edu. If you exit the ballot, you can go back to where you left off – just make sure to click “submit vote” at the end for your votes to count.
Check out the Elections Board’s candidate forum video.
The election supplement is also available and shows more competition for positions. For instance – there are now additional choice candidates for President, Internal Vice President (IVP), and Student Advocate General, now leaving only one executive position (External Vice President for Statewide Affairs) uncontested.
AS Interim Executive Director Sean Lieberman informed staff that “there are no longer any write-ins for this year.” He also said candidates and reaffirmations are randomized for each student’s ballot.
All this election delay, as dedicated newsletter readers will know, stems from cases of alleged election misconduct brought by Attorney General (AG) Eric Carlson and his office. As our very own Rosie Bultman explained, the Judicial Council (JC) issued rulings in two cases so far against Internal Vice President Açúcar Pinto and the Senate, and against Senator Enri Lala.
The Senate, under the chairship of Pinto, faced scrutiny over their votes on whether to empower Elections Board to accept more choice candidates, while Lala was found to have met with candidates to pressure them to drop out of the race. (Pinto believed the investigation was politically motivated. Lala said that his intention with the meetings was purely informative about what the positions entail, but conceded that “the line was sufficiently blurred.” For more, listen to Rosie’s story here.)
Other cases remain: a second closed hearing will be held this evening in an electoral interference case against another senator. The election misconduct proceedings are part of a broader “membership rights inquiry” by the AG’s office, which also includes allegations of discrimination and a hostile work environment within the Senate; and that a student’s appointment as chair of a campus org was improperly indefinitely tabled. Carlson told us that his office is “currently reviewing the facts of the case.”
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Free naloxone is coming to university-owned undergraduate housing. The proposal would see 40 cabinets of Narcan, used to reverse an opioid overdose, installed across all nine dorms and seven undergraduate apartment complexes. Gauchos for Recovery will be responsible for the costs of restocking the Narcan; Commission on Student Well-Being Co-Chair Le Anh Metzger said the boxes would be refilled at the end of each month.
A related bill would amend the legal code for the Public and Mental Health Commission to require its Public Health Special Projects Coordinator to be in charge of restocking all cabinets. This bill was tabled for one week.
Funding for this proposal, which requests $11.3k, would come from the High Impact Proposal Projects fund. It wasn’t immediately clear to the Senate how much money was left in that fund, so they held off on passing funding until this week’s meeting.
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The Senate heard the results of a survey by the Senate Outreach Committee about students’ perception of the Senate and struggle to find housing. Here’s a quick rundown.
Senate perception:
- Only 16 respondents were extremely or very familiar with the Senate (and I’m choosing to believe they’re all reading this newsletter right now, so hey!!). 47 were moderately familiar, 89 slightly familiar, and 86 not familiar at all.
- The vast majority of respondents said they had a neutral view of the Senate’s performance so far. 57 viewed the Senate’s performance somewhat or extremely positive, and 14 felt it’s been somewhat or extremely negative.
- Similarly, of the respondents with a non-neutral answer, the majority have high expectations for next year’s Senate.
- Students requested the Senate increase publicity efforts: “We rarely know what the Senate even looks like.”
Housing crisis:
- No shocker here: 231 out of 261 respondents share a room with at least one other person.
- 185 respondents said they were somewhat or extremely satisfied with their housing situations, while 47 said they were somewhat or extremely dissatisfied.
- 86 respondents think the amount they’re paying for housing corresponds closely or very closely to their quality of housing, while 102 say it corresponds not closely or not at all.
- As for the hardest part of finding housing, students cited a housing shortage, high costs (including for security deposits), and a lack of communication from property companies.
Senate Outreach Committee Analyst Neo Harter suggested the Senate could expand the housing fair to help people find roommates or potentially subsidize the costs of application fees. In terms of publicity, Harter acknowledged that campus outlets (like your favorite college radio station, right?) report on the Senate, but said “it’s the Senate’s responsibility to report on itself.”
Access this week’s AS Senate agenda (which includes their bills and resolutions) using your student email here. You can see last week’s agenda here. Meetings are typically held each week at the Flying A Room of the University Center (Main Floor) throughout the quarter, aside from Week 10. Please note that this week’s meeting on May 7 will be held at the Pardall Center. You can also watch live and past meetings on the ASUCSB YouTube here.
Find all our previous Senate Recaps here.