The ASUO Constitution Court is the body charged with upholding the Constitution and rules. Whenever any ASUO official breaks a rule, the court is supposed to determine what, if any, punishment should be dealt out.
Last year, the court took a hard-line stance on non-fulfillment of duties when it chose to remove then-Senate President Sara Hamilton from the Senate for failing to send out meeting agendas at least 48 hours in advance of a meeting as required by Senate rules (Oregon Public Meetings Law requires just 24 hours). At the time, Hamilton was running for ASUO Executive and had slightly more than a month left in her term.
It seems that a court that imposed the harshest penalty possible on Hamilton would continue to hold all ASUO bodies and officials to the strictest standards possible; this week’s ruling on Sen. Neil Brown’s grievance against the Senate proves otherwise.
Two weeks ago, we argued that the June 13 Senate meeting should be invalidated because minutes were not taken during the meeting. While we can understand the logic behind the court’s ruling that voiding the meeting entirely would cause more harm than good to innocent parties such as the Oregon Marching Band, we find the lack of any punishment at all to be hypocritical and inconsistent with previous rulings.
True, invalidating the June meeting would mean having to reconfirm four senators – some of whom were confirmed by only a few votes – and having to redo the vote on allocating more than $20,000 to the Oregon Marching Band. But the court points out that few people are arguing that the results of the meeting would have been different if minutes were taken. While the band would be the most innocent victim of any problems caused by invalidating the meeting, it seems highly unlikely that the Senate would fail to re-approve that money.
The court is also right to point out that, because the meeting did not infringe upon the rights of the public to attend, the decisions were not contrary to public interest.
Nevertheless, the lack of any punishment at all is unacceptable. The Senate has a responsibility to take minutes – the ruling says this much and disagrees with University General Counsel Randy Geller’s interpretation that minutes can be taken from memory after the fact. Senators knew they should have been taking minutes. It is unimportant exactly whose fault it was that minutes were not taken – a point our previous editorial missed – but Senators should have been aware of the requirement.
It is unclear how to punish an entire body without voiding the meeting, but simply saying that future violations of the law will result in some vague, unknown “strict penalties” is ludicrous. The court’s ruling is nothing more than a slap on the wrist. While it is nice to have the court clarify it’s interpretation of the requirement to take minutes during a meeting, the threat to follow the rules or else is so vague as to be completely pointless.
With no accountability for breaking the rules, constituents can not expect the government to stick to any part of the law – why should it if there are no penalties at all?
The precedent set by the ruling against Hamilton should have led to a transparent government that goes out of its way to follow each rule and law beyond the basic requirements. With the latest ruling, the court seems to be saying “break any rule you want and we may or may not hold you accountable.”