AS Senate Recap – 10/8/2025

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 Tatiana Jacquez brings you a recap of their latest meeting on October 8, 2025.

 

 

Police Presence and the ILP/Davidson Library Walkway: The meeting started off with a discussion surrounding the walkway between the ILP and Davidson Library, a site infamous for bikers to ride through to get to the bike parking spot, or get to class faster. Recently, University administration has begun efforts to end the usage of bikes in this area, and started a plan to embed the 3 E’s for Transportation–Engineering, Education, and Enforcement into the issue of the walkway being used as a bike path. Gary McPherson, Vice Chancellor of Administrative Services, gave a recap of the last eighteen months working on the issue with administration, and how complaints from students and faulty regarding bike usage in the ILP/Library walkway had steadily increased over the past year. Thus, the restriction of bikes in the walkway has been enforced starting over the summer and into the fall quarter, with signage being placed between the two buildings and emails being sent out to students to inform regarding the changes. UCPD Interim Chief of Police, Matthew Bly, gave data on the citations and warning given out by police at the site since the beginning of the quarter, with 1,206 verbal warnings being given out to students who continue to ride their bikes down the path. Additionally, four citations were given out to students who dismissed policemen’s verbal warnings to dismount. Bly assured Senators that the enforcement of the rule is a last resort, and administrators have pushed the education campaign as the main focus of their efforts. However, Senators Pascher, Luken, and Ly expressed concerns with how ill-informed students were, and urged the dissemination of information to be more apparent to the general student body.Co-chair of the AS Bike Committee, Anthony Wu, spoke on behalf of the AS Bike Committee, where he stated the organization’s top priority is restoring the ILP bike path, and he revealed path plans that would cut into bike parking the ILP. Wu

asserted that the most influential way the Senate and Associated Student’s admin could help was finding funding in the AS budget to allocate to the new bike path

project. Additionally, Wu also addressed the aforementioned citations, and how a lot of students don’t seem to be aware that the fee is waivable with the online learning

modules. Should an individual choose to pay the citation fee for riding between the ILP and Davidson Library, the fees would go to Transportation and Parking Services at UCSB, mostly being spent on maintaining the modules as a restorative justice option. Plans for a new bike path to go through this area were shown to the Senate. Josh

Rohmer, Director of Capital & Physical Planning, stated that once construction plans are finalized for the new bike path including the estimated length and materials required, the University will be able to get monetary estimates on the project, and the school will then look in to funding sources available to the school. Rohmer estimated that the bike path plans will be available to the student boy within about a month.

 

Senator Evan Sussman presented a bill that would clean up the legal code of the Constitution of the Associated Students of UCSB. A Bill to Clean Up Legal Code aims to make the constitution more accessible to students to read, getting rid of 80 pages of legal code that are outdated and redundant. Sussman acknowledged that the Associated Students’ reputation is “not a beacon of light on campus”, and that the 76th Senate is working to change that by making the association work earnestly for student needs. Senators seemed to be on board with the bill, particularly Senator Pascher and Senator Luken, speaking to the work Senator Sussman did over the summer, pouring over 500 pages of legal code to remove redundant and outdated information. The senators passed a motion to refer the bill to the Liaison Committee, where they will look at the bill more in-depth.

 

Former AS Senator and Chair of Finance, Aryaman Singh, presented an artificial intelligence program, Mapache, to help students navigate and find answers to any questions they might have regarding AS operations or where to locate information on the website. The artificial intelligence does not “hallucinate” meaning the bot doesn’t offer false or inaccurate responses should it not know the answer to a question. Instead, the bot would provide contact information to an AS department or representative who may know the answer to their question. The chatbot would pull information off of a document database to provide users based on their prompt, which Singh said Senators would be able to edit and have access to.

 

And finally, first-year Crystal Gonzales spoke up during public forum concerning the recent library cuts, offering a new student perspective to the Senate. Gonzales came to the meeting independent of any organization, rather hoping to voice concern over the cut library hours, and how the issue has already impacted student life. She recalled a personal anecdote of seeing students huddling on campus in the dark just outside the library after one a.m., continuing to study despite their study space being closed. Senators Pascher and Luken assured Gonzales that the Senate has been making efforts to talk with the University about extending the hours, with a meeting taking place the following day, October 9th, between Senators and the Chancellor alongside his cabinet to discuss the plan to move forward.

 

The Senate tabled the following pieces of legislation for one week:

A Resolution to Establish the First-Gen and BIPOC Peer Mentor Advocacy Program (P-MAP) (Wahidullah – Ola-Olaitan)

This bill would establish a student-led mentorship program, supporting incoming first-generation and BIPOC students by pairing experienced student

leaders with mentees to guide them through navigating student-life at UCSB.

 

A Resolution to Establish a Language Revitalization Grant Program (LRGP)(Wahidullah-Harter)

This resolution would provide fiscal initiatives and programs for students seeking to learn languages that aren’t provided in the current curriculum at UCSB, highlighting languages that are endangered, Indigenous, or underrepresented heritage and ancestral dialects. The program would require an application, in which students would have to affirm their commitment to learning through a comprehensive study plan, personal statement detailing their connection to the language, and an itemized budget proposal to spent the 750 dollars granted to them by the program.

 

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. You can also watch live and

past meetings on YouTube here.