Vis Lupi Est Grex

Sagebrush awakens to ASUN's problems

Hallelujah! Although, just a few demonstrably false facts. Some comments too, where appropriate.

[F]ormer university student Corinna Cohn ... filed [complaints] to the student judicial council that the senate violated Nevada Open Meeting Law in several instances, in part by not posting meeting minutes online and not keeping complete and accurate minutes in 2008 and 2009." (Emphasis added)

In the complaint for Case No. AN-005, Cohn actually complained that the Senate did not produce written minutes of several of its meetings, as the Open Meeting Law (OML) requires. It was the Judicial Council order that got its reasoning wrong. It wasn't because the minutes weren't online; it's because ASUN could not prove they were ever produced by handing them over.

Although passed properly by both the senate and president in 2008 and 2009 the bills did not go through legal channels for certification after their passing as the senate rules require.

Not entirely true. There are other bases for invalidation, including countless OML problems, but the Judical Council arguably exceeded its authority by not declaring the actions void on the grounds of the OML problems that Cohn complained of, despite the Council making specific findings to the contrary and despite the defending parties' lack of denying anything in her complaints.

If you do what I argue is the prudent thing, which is to apply the Council's holdings to all items specifically complained against, you get a much different list of what is invalid and why. Remember, the ASUN never disputed Cohn's complaints. I argue that just because the Judicial Council hasn't said an act is void doesn't mean that the facts can independently demonstrate to the Senate and President that there are errors that need to be cured.

Eli Reilly, who served as the student body president during this time ... said he didn’t know bills weren’t being enrolled properly because “I sign it or I don’t. It’s not my job to make sure that clerical things are being followed through.”

Although Eli is, I suppose, technically correct that he has no independent duty to ensure the Senate follows procedural rules it must abide by, one complaint specifically alleged that Eli did not perform specific statutory duties required of him, like create an adequate record of when bills were presented to him and when he signed them into law.

Many Associated Students of the University of Nevada leaders say the procedural mistakes come from lack of instruction between sessions.

So do the advisors have a duty to become intimately familiar with the system the students created? Aren't they really the only substantial common thread from session to session?

“There just wasn’t any training[," Geremia said.]" Since then, the senate has enacted a training session during the transition period.

And a lot of good that training did for the 77th Session, which engaged in much of the same despicable conduct. The next graf in the story is my personal favorite.

Just one year before the errors, the senate of that time re-wrote the entire ASUN Constitution, transforming the roughly 10-page document to nearly 200 pages.

This single statement could not be more demonstrably false. The present ASUN constitution. The previous ASUN constitution. Notice how the current constitution is about half the size the old one. Where did this 200-page number come from? From all the laws enacted in pursuance of the present constitution. Big difference.

“It’s part of the issue of the complexity of the laws they’ve created for themselves,” ASUN advisor Sandy Rodriguez said. “It was inevitable based on what the 75th session wrote and its complexity.”

Very noticable what isn't said here (it's not my job to teach the senators what their job requires). Also, notice the tone. Blame the guys who really created the mess, the ones who made everything so damn complicated. Nice deflection. So how do you explain the people who created the system didn't find it so complicated?

The seven meetings declared null ... failed to comply with the constitution’s open-meeting laws.

The ASUN Constitution does not contain open meeting laws. The state legislature has required the Board of Regents to require student government to comply with the state's open meeting law, but also requires the Board of Regents to enforce it. NRS 241.038. The Regents have essentially said, student governments, you must comply with every letter of the OML. So how did the ASUN Judicial Council get to this? It found that since ASUN enacted this law, it gave the Council a way to apply the OML under ASUN law.

The judicial council ruled to void the meetings after all parties agreed Nevada Open Meeting Law was violated when the minutes detailing the meetings were deemed missing.

Well, Fryman, you got that fact correct here, so why didn't you get it right in your story's first graf?

Some claim that advisors failed to step in when the body was violating state open meeting laws. Rodriguez, however, sent 2008-09 Speaker Priscilla Acosta a five-page document detailing the issue of missing and incomplete minutes three months before Cohn filed any grievances.

This is perhaps the most interesting issue that has come to light in all of this: whether the ASUN's business manager has a duty under Regents policy to stop spending when spending was not lawfully approved under the student government's constitution.
 
On the whole, this story is exactly what the student body needs to see. Hopefully, it starts discussions about whether the advisors have a duty to ensure ASUN plays by its own rules and whether the advisors really understand the shift to a more formal system of student governance the students demanded with the present constitution's adoption.