Judiciary outlines decision process

After rendering a decision on the Negley suit against the Associated Students Inc., the A.S. Judiciary Committee said they used a balancing method to decide that the A.S.I. was in violation of the precedents set forth in the Supreme Court ruling of Smith vs. UC Board of Regents.

The judiciary committee finalized their decision late Friday night which outlined the reasons and presented recommendations regarding their decision in favor of A.S. Sen. Steven Negley and CSULB student Joseph Thinn.

"At this point, the decision has to speak for itself, there is nothing I can clarify until the appeals process is up," Philip Jordan, chief justice of the judiciary committee said.

This decision awarded both Negley and Thinn a 15 cent refund for their portion of the mandatory student fees which funded the Black Consciousness Conference in November and the keynote speaker, former Nation of Islam member, Khallid Abdul Muhammad.

The judiciary committee based their decision on the Smith vs. UC Board of Regents case which states that the organization cannot focus on political or ideological goals when it outweighs a student's educational benefit.

Jordan and two other committee members, Jennie H. Balderas and Andrew Wilson, determined that the Muhammad speech was primarily ideological and outweighed the educational value of the speech finding the speech thus violating Smith vs. UC Board of Regents.

The forth member of the judiciary commitee, Jose Arguello, voted in favor of the A.S. because he believes that students could benefit educationally from Muhammed's speech. He said Muhammed's speech was inflammatory but not political nor ideological.

Arguello quotes CSULB's course catalogue and the university's educational purpose in the decision. He bases his decision on the fact that the university expects students to be exposed to issues of racism and sexism and believes this is what Muhammed's speech did.

The bottom line of Arguello's bases of his decision is that Muhammed's speech was educational.

The decision set forth Friday also made many recommendations to the A.S.I., A.S. Board of Control and Student Life and Development Office.

"We can only make recommendations," said Jordan. "The only thing that is law is that they get their 15 cents."

If these recommendations are not upheld, the current A.S.I. policy will be found lacking and not up to standards according to the four page decision the judiciary committee posted Friday.

This would lead to the desegregated fees option of the A.S.I. which would allow for a set of optional student fees . The only mandatory fees that would be paid to the A.S. would be what it needed for student government operations.