SUA Official Recall Statement
Wednesday October 26, 2022
To: UC Santa Cruz Undergraduate Student Body
From: Dean of Students on behalf of Student Union Assembly officers Jimmy Gomez, Interim President, Amalia Bostian, Vice President of Student Life, Mitra Zarinebaf, Vice President of External Affairs, Dora Rasch, Vice President of Academic Affairs
Subject: SUA Official Recall Statement
To the UC Santa Cruz Undergraduate Student Body,
On Wednesday, October 19th, Vice Presidents Dora Rasch, Jimmy Gomez, Mitra Zarinebaf, and Amalia Bostian released an official petition to recall the Student Union Assembly President Alfredo Gama Salmeron. We are now writing to announce that Alfredo Gama Salmeron has been officially recalled as the undergraduate student body President. This process is pursuant to Article II, Section H of the SUA Constitution. As stated in said Constitution: the Vice President of Internal Affairs, Jimmy Gomez, will be the Interim President until a new one is selected.
Throughout this statement, we will be referring to the SUA constitution, which can be found here. The full passage regarding vacancy of the President’s position will be included at the end of this statement for reference and clarity.
We aim to be as transparent about the petition process as possible, so we will explicitly outline our petition validation process here. After the petition reached a considerable number of signatures, the data was securely sent to the UCSC Office of the Registrar to validate for current, registered undergraduate student signatures. The information that was collected in the petition was users’ manually entered student ID, manually entered UCSC email, and automatically collected UCSC email accounts for the session the user submitting the form was logged in on (meaning students had to log in to their UCSC email to submit the petition, and did not manually enter this address).
The total number of confirmed signatures is 1,221. Using the “logged into Google” email addresses, the total number of registered student signatures collected is 1,151. The automatically collected email addresses are likely the most reliable because of the UCSC gmail authentication system and because this data eliminates the possibility of typos (whereas manually entered emails and student IDs have a significant possibility of typos). Using both the “logged into Google” email addresses and manually entered student ID’s, the total number of signatures is 1113. Adding the self entered email address along with the other two fields, the total number of signatures is 1044. All of these totals adjust for duplicates, non-enrolled students, and non-student email addresses. Of the “logged into Google” email addresses, 154 came from Merrill, 128 came from Oakes, 122 came from Kresge, 120 came from Crown, 117 came from Cowell, 116 came from College Nine, 115 came from Porter, 105 came from Rachel Carson, 99 came from John R. Lewis, and 75 came from Stevenson (illustrated in Figure 1 in supplements).
The SUA constitution states that “any Executive Officer of the SUA may be subject to recall through … a petition of at least five percent of the total registered undergraduate students where there are at least ten (10) student signatures from students affiliated with each college” (Article II, Section H). The current number of enrolled students is 17,566, and 5% of that is 879 students. All of the above signature totals are above the 5% quota of students, and there were significantly more than ten signatures from each college, as listed above. Therefore, the petition has reached more than enough signatures from registered students to activate/confirm a recall.
The Constitution indicates two possible options for a new SUA President to be selected: a new president can be selected with a campus wide search, or the Internal Vice President decides to permanently take the position and an IVP search occurs (Article II, Section G, 8). We want feedback from the community on which route to take, so we can move forward in a way that the student body feels best represents their wishes. We intend to dedicate time in the next SUA meeting to having a community discussion as an agenda item with ample time for students to share their opinions.
We recognize that this time has been confusing and frustrating for people involved and watching, and has impacted the UC Santa Cruz community. Going forward, we aim to provide structure to the space in an efficient way. The SUA Parliamentarian appointed at the end of Spring 2022, Amanda Pepe, will resume working immediately. This means that the next SUA Meeting will be scheduled as soon as possible, either next week or the week after. An announcement will be sent at least 72 hours prior to the next meeting to all students through a Dean of Students email.
The sequence of events associated with this process has been drawn out and complicated, and we also recognize that the SUA space and our relationship to our fellow students is now a bit tumultuous. As we tread the next steps, we want to proceed with intention and care, in respect and admiration of student input. As for you, we emphatically encourage ALL STUDENTS to attend the next SUA meeting and stay engaged with student government, as many important initiatives will be addressed in the following weeks, including renovating our Constitution to reflect effective practices of the SUA space and new considerations for our governance.
Sincerely,
Jimmy Gomez, Interim President (suavpi@ucsc.edu)
Amalia Bostian, Vice President of Student Life (suavpsl@ucsc.edu)
Mitra Zarinebaf, Vice President of External Affairs (suavpe@ucsc.edu)
Dora Rasch, Vice President of Academic Affairs (suavpaa@ucsc.edu)
Supplementary documents and figures:
SUA Constitution, Article II, Section H:
“In the event that the President position is vacant, the Internal Vice President shall assume the position and an Internal Vice President candidate search will begin. If there is no Internal Vice President or the Internal Vice President does not wish to become the President, then the External Vice President shall assume the duties of President and an External Vice President candidate search will begin. If there is no External Vice President or the External Vice President does not wish to become the President, then the Internal Vice President of the SUA shall serve as the interim President while a campus-wide search for President candidates is undertaken. The Internal Vice President shall relinquish the role of President when the Student Union Assembly confirms a new President following a campus-wide search. At the newly confirmed President’s or the SUA’s discretion, they may opt to keep the Internal Vice President in the role of President for a maximum of two (2) weeks following their confirmation for the purpose of ensuring a seamless transition of power”.
Figure 1: Automatically collected UCSC gmail account verified petition signatures by college.
