I. Call to Order – 6:15
A. President: Alex Lee
B. Vice President: Abhay Sandhu
C. Senator: Sofia Molodanof
D. Senator: Sam Chiang
E. Senator: Shaitaj Dhaliwal
F. Senator: Irveen Grewal
G. Senator: Ricardo Martinez
H. Senator: Joshua Dalavai
I. Senator: Parteek Singh
J. Senator: Sam Park
K. Senator: Georgia Savage
L. Senator: Puneet Dihndsa
M. Senator: Adilla Jamaludin
N. ECAC Chair: -
O. EPPC Chair: Brent Rosenwald ABSENT
P. IAC Chair: Nicholas Flores
Q. EAC Chair: Joe Nazzal
R. AAC Chair: Ritesh Mishra
S. GASC Chair: Ivon Garcia ABSENT
T. B&F: David Heifitz
U. Secretary of Outreach and Engagement: Jade Wolansky
V. Controller: Joe DeAngelo
II. Swearing in new Senator
i. Sandhu: if you can put your left hand on this constitution and I am going to recite the oath of office
ii. Adam: I, Adam, student of UC Davis in good academic standing promise to abide by ASUCD guidelines of ethics, promote the welfares and interest of the members of asucd, enact rules and procedures necessary and proper for the efficient operation of ASUCD in consistency with the ASUCD constitution and carry out and faithfully execute the duties enumerated in the ASUCD constitution and ASUCD bylaws at all times during my term as a voting member of the ASUCD senate
III. Public Announcements: Nishi Project – 6:19
i. Presenter: I am here on behalf of nishi gateway project. Most of you all voted on it. I have flyers so if you want one to utilize and pass on to your friends, please ask and ill bring this around. All of you should be registered to vote in Davis so if you could put your email down that would be helpful. This is so we can keep you updated on the project. We can respond that way. I wanted to come here to make an announcement because ASUCD has supported our project but there have not been a lot of ASUCD members involved and that is troubling to hear. As student government, we have a lot of networks that we get to interact with and are really important for us. If we don’t utilize them, it is no good. If you all have not reached out to constituency to inform them about housing crisis. It’s never too late. I’m not going to say you failed. It happens to the best of us. I’m asking you all to get involved. We have a lot of different ways you can. You can publicly endorse our project. We need physical support. We need you convincing your friends why they need to care. A majority of students aren’t registered to vote. This impacts them and they don’t understand how they can make a difference. They only think about academics and you all think in a different way. You all care about the university and fellow students. Please put your name down and we will contact you to come to our information nights every Friday at 6 pm. We will provide you with all the training you need. You all have led campaigns so you’re already good at that. If you have questions, ill be here for a few minutes and Parteek has my contact information he can provide for you all. I appreciate your time. Thank you and again, we really need your support. June 7th is the vote. We will be out tabling next week so we need you all there.
ii. Dahliwal: can you bullet point what this is exactly? I want to sign the petition but what exactly is it?
iii. Presenter: It is a proposed innovation park. It’s called measure A because it’s in support. It’s a project between the university and downtown. It’s an empty plot of lot so private developers want to develop o this land and build housing. We have a .2% vacancy rate. It’s a crisis. We already have the 2020 initiative with 5000 new students coming in. the university isn’t doing anything about the housing crisis. 85% of energy on site will be produced through solar energy. It will provide 1500-1800 jobs. It’s a place for small business and companies to build up here. 13/15 companies that started here ended up leaving because they didn’t have the space to grow.
iv. Nazzal: so external affairs is working a statement to support this but we don’t really have any numbers
v. Presenter: Do you mind putting your email? I can give you statistics here also yesona.org is our website and you can find great information there.
vi. Jamaludin: I support this project and I want to note there are others that don’t support this project. I recommend you reach out to those people and talk to them. I recommend you talk to the unit director of CCE and ask about her support.
vii. Dalavai: so there is an active no campaign throughout the city. Could you refute or address their concerns?
viii. Presenter: The no campaign started much later than the yes campaign. This project has been in development for 10 years. They went in and they know a lot of people. What are things that really need improvement? And one of those is public infrastructure and traffic on the Richards corridor. They’re not attacking those points. The one thing they bring up s unaffordable housing and as someone who has worked with low-income first generation students I understand that concern. Based on my research and trusted others, it is factually incorrect. They are predicting the prices of infrastructure that has not yet been built. So the construction won’t happen until all public infrastructures have been built. Because that’s the area in most need of funding, they are not going to build residential components until after all of that is complete. It is about what Davis needs the most and how we can address those. If it was about capitalizing on the income then they would build that first but that’s actually the last thing that is going to be built. If you don’t understand I can clarify more
ix. Molodonaf: what is the range of housing? Can you explain what is expensive housing?
x. Presenter: Anytime you build something you can’t say how much it’s going to cost when you haven’t even made a contract with developers or know what the economic outlook will be in that moment. To say something will be unaffordable it is an early assessment not premised on anything.
xi. Wolansky: I live on that street. I think it’s really good you build after you expand housing and Richards already has five stops so it takes 30 minutes to get back. Thank you for addressing those points. What is the target audience for these new housing apartments? Low end? High end?
xii. Presenter: So right now the target audience is residential and student housing components. The targets are students. The reason being because majority of students can’t afford to buy their own home. The for rent units because of close proximity to students and downtown it is attractive. The residential housing is appealing to people who work in these companies as well as university professors or employees or others interested leaving in this innovation area
xiii. Savage: I was curious as to interns in particular is it horizontal or pyramidal structure?
xiv. Presenter: I’m not really the person to talk to about the infrastructure necessarily. Basically, its not a sprawling innovation it is infield
xv. Savage: I meant interns, is there a point person to talk to? I know someone came to EAC and a few people perhaps don’t know each other or communicate. Are you the leader?
xvi. Presenter: I’m not the lead person on the project. I am one of the organizers. Ill write it down and get back to you. I don’t know what pyramidal or horizontal means
xvii. Savage: do you have a headquarters?
xviii. Presenter: Essentially how the structure goes we have the project developers and below are the executive team. I work at management consulting firm and we organize through the sustainability pack. Below the team would be the managers and below that… is that what you mean?
xix. Savage: Whom do we speak to to get involved with campaign?
xx. Presenter: That’s what the paper with the emails is for. Someone in office will reach out to you.
xxi. Savage: in terms of getting people to meetings whom will you want?
xxii. Presenter: Anyone that you want. They don’t have to know about the project, anyone can come.
xxiii. Savage: where?
xxiv. Presenter: Olive drive 620 if I believe. If you Google Safford and Lincoln that is the office.
xxv. Savage: I was just asking because what might be better than asucd because there is an active a no campaign. Some people on this table might not even agree. The office of advocacy, a branch of asucd, there’s an active campaign for affordable housing and they deal with that a lot. If you have a lead intern, getting them into those meetings and talking to Sam alavi might be a good idea. That’s been more active on other uc campuses and I think this is definitely a good solution they’d definitely want to help
xxvi. Presenter: Yeah I know Sam. That wont be a problem. The developers provided 1.2 million to the city bank for affordable housing to allocate to people in the form of waivers.
Public Announcements – 6:38
i. Daniel: we are here on behalf of OASR to give you a general announcement. We are having a get out the vote event. A lot of students aren’t registered to vote. May 23rd is the last day to vote. Next week we will have some fun events
ii. Student: we wanted to do it Mon-Friday but there is something going on Friday so it will lend Thursday. Voting is important, 8% of millennial voted last election cycle. So about 2000 out of 30000 voted in uc Davis. If we are able to grow to 30%, which is possible, we can decide things like who our mayor and council are. We can make a significant impact. Once we build that impact legislators and candidates will take students and student priorities a lot more seriously and that’s kind of the main reason why we are trying to put out this get out the vote week to make it socially acceptable to vote. Everybody should be registered to vote. Everybody should go out and register and go out and vote.
iii. Daniel: With that, we want to dedicate a week to letting people come out and register the easiest way possible. Throughout the week we are having events and we are still in the planning to how people can get out and engaged. We have a few things lined up like pie a politician. We are getting a Donald trump mask and you can pie it for a $1. Yesterday I was at the lobby corps meeting and a present thought of bringing in a goat, don’t be a goat and bring out the vote. It gets people interested. Its just little things like that that will bring students out. With that being said a lot of times we only have so many people we can reach out to but really the group on campus with the most power to reach out to the student population is ASUCD with that being said we really want ASUCD to come out on board with us. We got CAL perk, Davis students for Bernie sanders. Regardless of whom you will vote for, you should vote. Everybody should be on board. ASUCD is that cherry on top that will make this actually work and happen. I really hope we can figure something out to make this successful. We had a representative come in and teach us how to register other students. Fun fact, if you aren’t registered in your current city there is a 30% chance your vote doesn’t count
iv. Savage: basically you’re given a temporary ballot in this county and some don’t get counted. So it’s important to register where you live currently
v. Daniel: a lot of students say they are registered back home but they need to be registered here. Primary is during finals. Fun events next week will be Ping-Pong food, hopefully some type of debate, which will be fun and exciting.
vi. Student: we do have a meeting with the other clubs forming this coalition. I know you have this meeting but if you have a staff you can send to take notes. We can send the information over as well.
vii. Jamaludin: please use gender-neutral terms. And when is that meeting?
viii. Student: today at 8 in AMC it is a coalition meeting
ix. Savage: the meeting tonight is for the planned events next week so people in lobby corps will be taking notes which I can send to all of you. There is a record on a UC wide level and in terms of last election we registered 52000 on a UC level and showing that to legislators we saw a significant increase in them agreeing to hold meetings with us. It allows student voices to be heard in those lobby visits so it is really important. All of the details will be fine tuned tonight. It is not an OASR meeting. It’s planned by a group of organizations trying to encourage people to vote as a whole. Its not just one person spearheading this. If anyone is interested and would like to table, it is an option as well. I think overall it’s trying to encourage voter registration.
x. DeAngelo: is this campaign specifically any candidate running for office? Any affiliation?
xi. Student: we did come up with the event. We decided in order for it to be impactful we should bring everybody on
xii. DeAngelo: who is financing? As asucd we can be involved in any form of political campaign. Lines can be blurred and we have gotten in trouble in the past
xiii. DeAngelo: what is the debate going to be like?
xiv. Daniel: our idea was just to invite students of different political views to engage in debate. We have two-minute sessions per person. We would come up with a set of questions and let them debate
xv. DeAngelo: I would encourage not doing that especially if its through one of our units because I feel like it would be in poor taste, potentially bias and wouldn’t achieve anything. The rest sounds great, but that event specifically would have a negative effect
xvi. Singh: is this happening at Coho or quad?
xvii. Daniel: trying to book MU patio but I will give more detail after tonight meeting
xviii. Singh: is there Facebook event we can invite friends?
xix. Student: we are still trying to edit that but it is there