Senate
fights Admissions Office, Pollock
By Daniel Linck Savino
Online Forty-Niner
Staff Writer
A fractious and confrontational Associated Students Senate debated Wednesday
with both the Admissions Office and ASI President Jamie Pollock.
The first disagreement centered on an “enrollment confirmation deposit
fee” proposed by the Admissions Office. The $150 deposit is designed to
reduce the number of incoming students who accept entrance to Cal State Long
Beach but do not enroll. The deposit, payable in May, would be applied to the
first semester’s tuition, and is not an added fee. Sen. Jessica Vieira
from the College of Education and Senator-at-Large Brian
Campos sponsored a resolution in support of the deposit, which was passed by
two votes, revoted, and then defeated
by two votes.
A lengthy floor debate had Tom Myers, director of Admissions, repeatedly reassuring
the Senate the deposit was neither a fee nor an effort to keep students out of
the university.
“
I’m here to admit students, not to keep them out,” Myers said. “We’re
definitely not trying to exclude the people who can’t pay the money.”
Any student on a State, Pell or Cal grant would be automatically exempt from
the fee. Students receiving full financial aid would also be exempted, he said.
He also said the Admissions Office will happily take fee and rejection appeals,
hearing them on a case-by-case basis. He noted the office had received 10 appeals
of the current university application fee, out of the nearly 35,000 students
paying, and granted all of them. Of the roughly 6,000 SOAR attendees, there were
18 appeals of the $50 SOAR registration fee. All were granted.
The low number of appeals, Myers noted, showed the current fees were not a great
strain on students.
“
The numbers just don’t bear out that this is a huge problem,” Myers
said.
The Senate asked questions around that issue multiple times, though, forcing
Myers to repeatedly revisit the Admissions Office’s pro-student nature.
“
I take appeals very seriously,” he added. In three years, the office has
not turned down any appeal, he told the Senate.
In developing the proposed deposit, Myers found the national no-show rate for
accepted students is 6 to 7 percent, but this year’s rate at CSULB was
17 percent. This affects the campus as a whole, he said. Because larger classes
are planned, smaller classes are sometimes cancelled in order to provide adequate
faculty for an inflated number of incoming freshmen.
Myers described the current situation statewide. The CSUs were recently permitted
by order of the chancellor to require a deposit of up to $250. He also noted
that in the University of California system there is a $500 deposit and no appeals
process. Over 90 percent of American universities, he said, currently require
a deposit.
Senate debate eventually turned to the dollar value of the deposit. Senator Amin
Km from the College of Natural Science and Math made a motion to specify the
Senate’s support for a $100 deposit. The resolution was successfully amended,
and was moved to a floor vote.
After the lengthy’debate, the Senate voted 11-9 to approve the Vieira-Campus
resolution supporting the deposit. Outside the Senate chambers, Myers said the
Senate’s resolution simply affirmed an ongoing process. The proposed deposit
will be moving on to the Academic Senate and President Robert C. Maxson.
“
I think it would have had an effect on President Maxson if they had said
no,” Myers said.
But moments after he had left the chambers, the Senate did just that. Elaine
Chau, from the College of Natural Science and Math, announced she had meant to
abstain. A revote saw both Chau and Mike Emenhiser, from the College of Business,
changing their “aye” votes. Emenhiser said his original intent had
been to oppose the measure, which he did in the second vote.
Sens. Kory Witt, Clint Sylvestre, William Sanchez, Jessica Vieira, Juancarlos
Mariano, Ashley Stanton, Guido D’Onofrio, Amin Km and Brian Campos voted
in support of the resolution in both the first and second rounds.
In repeated opposition were Sens. Heidi Chavez, Kenneth Cooper, Shefali Mistry,
Elisa Herrera, Shelena McClinton, Naomi Cruz, Sandra Olmedo, Zion Redie and Shauntel
Smith.
The measure was defeated.
The second fight within the Senate involved a restructuring of the executive
branch. President Jamie Pollock, had asked the Senate to rewrite the AS Bylaws
earlier this semester. Her intent had been to bring the position of chief of
staff under the heading of “executive officer.” A bylaw revision
doing so was nearly defeated in a circuitous 10-1-7 vote.
The position, held by her former campaign manager Bobby Godina, is receiving
a monthly stipend of $1,322. Pollock describes him as her “right-hand man,” and
his help, she said, is essential to her work as president.
Pollock’s desire to have the chief of staff defined in the bylaws as an
executive officer is an effort to shore up what is a legally uncertain payment.
Bylaws allow for executive officers to “be granted a sum of money, with
Senate approval, to be determined annually during the regular budget process.” Those
officers are the administrator, attorney general and public defender. There is
no such provision for payment to the chief of staff, a position described in
the Bylaws as being in the president’s cabinet.
This legal uncertainty has led to a lawsuit filed by John Kitahara, requesting
the Judiciary stop Godina’s payments.
Pollock’s effort to have the chief of staff defined as an executive officer
was nearly defeated in a reworded form.
Senator-at-Large’Sandra Olmedo successfully removed the description of
chief of staff from the Executive Officers section, negating the main intent
of the legislation. Original restructuring of the positions of attorney general
and public defender remained, but is of secondary importance to the definition
of chief of staff. Throughout the process, the attorney general and public defender
had been reclassified as “special officers.”
Olmedo’s motion killed the legislation, much to the disappointment of several
senators.
“
What we did there was basically doing the opposite of what this amendment was
intended to do,” Emenhiser said.
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