University of California Berkeley - Blue and Gold Yearbook (Berkeley, CA)

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:ott Bonds, and they were for it They ■ought it to the senate and pushed it, [ASUC torney] Mark Himmelstein amended the jntract. There was some legitimacy; we ' d id tough times, we were still going. But the )ck we came up against was, either way, lere was going to be some problem, and if e don ' t do this, there is going to be a vote of 3 confidence and the staff will fall apart, us, the new Chancellor was coming in, and I new senators— it was a concern we would :come a splintered group as we approached le next critical stage as we tried to bring lings over. It was probably a bad decision. The other thing to note is that the facts le senate had to deal with. Information did Dt come down. There were lots of problems we had this ar with the executive director. We got kicked It of the employee meeting, funds were set ide [s3s,ooo was taken out of student gov- nment funds to help pay for legal fees in nith v. Regents and $12,000 was taken out to Tset accruals of debt on the computer ac- junting system) without the senate voting, hese were things that in the past were kept nongst three or four people. The Presidents ere just supportive of doing those sort of ;ings. But the senate never knew the money as set aside. It was happening every year, ' idently. You get the idea— a top person, one per- in was moving money, and the top people ho caught it said that seems fine and it ould happen. And so, in that year, and in :ars past, the senate wouldn ' t know that lis had happened March 1 998: Peace and Prosperity— A Midnight Initiative n Wednesday, March 11, we passed the constitutional amendment [to eliminate the BMB and the executive director ' s position]. The week before, Scott Bonds started this ASUC Store e-mail list and I didn ' t realize the depth of it. It had people on going back to the late 1980s. In one e-mail : accused Sharon and me of selling out the ore for a letter of recommendation. I had ready gotten accepted to the University of [ichigan [law school] and I had certainly Dt gotten a letter of recommendation from le Chancellor. And I pointed out to people lat lots of people got his recommendation, en people who had opposed him. Anyway, Scott decided to have an open irum for Sunday about the agreement, and I lought, ' Tine. By the time he came to the ednesday night meeting, what people were seeing was that he didn ' t know what he was talking about. The next weekend after the vote on amendments, but belore the final decision, we had a special meeting scheduled from noon one day to 8 o ' clock the next day. It started at 2 p.m., and we went on until ten that night, and we had an hour off for dinner. We came back the next day too. So we went a long time— and I have to com- mend—I mean, a lot of people came and participated and that was impressive for the senate. It turned out to be a fabulous group. I cannot thank this year ' s senate enough. There was a lot of intelligence, hut even more commitment. They came to more special meetings and were willing to stay and deal with things. Our initial nose count put us at 11 votes. We needed to pick up three votes [approval of the agreement, under the ASUC Constitu- tion, required a super majority of 14 votes in the 20-member senate]. It was Monday night. I spent a lot of time talking to people in the senate chambers and in the halls. We were getting to the point where most people were close, and somebody wanted to make an amendment. And I said, You can ' t amend an agreement. You ' ve got to go for it. We realized we were done. It got to be about midnight and they kept extending the vote to ask and answer questions. The nose count at 1 o ' clock was about 13. Amir Shafaie [a Student Action senator] was the perfect closer; if you heard him, he was really im- pressive. Anny Song was next on the list. And so, the moment of truth. We ' re going through, you know, yes, no, and we ' re count- ing. Finally we get to the end of the list, and it was 14. A few people missed roll call, hut we knew it passed, and there was a standing ovation— a show of joy. I thought it was quite appropriate. When big, good legislation passes Congress, you always see that kind of thing, and this was at about i::;o a.m. The final vote was 16-3. So we get up early the next morning- there was a BMB meeting [laugh]— which had plenty of irony because we basically just voted to disband it the night before. Then we just spread the word. Shortly after the I ' Otc ' to ratify the agreenwm, the senate hired a labor laivyet Brandes voluntarily severed his contract after one day of ju-gotkition. and a portion of tht ' remaining six years of his contriict was bought out bv the ASUC. Later in fune. all full time employees were given severance packaii es (one iveek ' s salary per year of service and paid sick daysl loialins, approximately Si.i million. On fuly 1, iidministnituv employe es. niilucling those m student affairs. bc ' Ctinu ' campus employees with six months ' guaranteed employment. Store personnel became employees of Follett Book- stores with a one-year guarantee oj employment. Epilogue our father ' s a lawyer. What ' s his area? Bankruptcy [laugh]. He dealt with bankruptcy and eviction, so he fought an unlawful detainer At one point during the course of all this — I talked to him about this throughout— and he thought an unlawful detainer lasting a year was ridiculous! Did your Dad ' s being a lawyer influence your ability to negotiate? I think I ' ve gotten a better sense of what the logistics or legalities are. When I took office I set about reading all the pleadings and paper- work. I had a little bit better of an under- standing. Probably not as good as some people think [laugh]. Are you aware of how deeply the impact of your decisions affect employees, students, adminis- trators, and others on the campus? There is a growing awareness, I think. There was an immediate impact when we talked to the employees — that it is more good than bad. There is a bit of personal confi- dence that we did something that will turn out well. During the t vo weeks until we introduced the agreement in the senate, we were up til midnight negotiating it. I wasn ' t getting a lot of sleep— I had a midterm in PoliSci 105 with Tom Bates, who used to be a State Assemblyman in this area. After class, I spent some time talking with him— and I said I wasn ' t getting a lot of sleep. Am I too invested in this thing? Did this happen to you? And he said, You are probably a little bit more invested than you ought to be and that ' s okay, and he sort of talked me through some things about how to deal with it. There were all these ideas. Then we saw the theories— the nicer store, the paying off the debt, the more scholarships possibly for students. What we were talking about wasn ' t empty. More was actually going to be pos- sible, and actually was going to happen soon. And so, that idea that we were actually doing something— that ' s why people go into government — that ' s why I wanted to go— so that you can have made some contribution, and you can make something a little better. In three years, I thought certain things I had done had helped out some groups, and I had made something a little better. I really thought I was making it a lot better. And that ' s all that matters, if you can go away knowing that. ■ Focus 71

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22 with d final rough draft. We thought the process would be that we would do some concepts and the attorneys would come in and make sure it works and clarify a few things. So we were thinking December 4, which was the date for the mandatory settle- ment conference in the two lawsuits, as the day we ' d be done so we could go to the judge and say, Here we go. You mentioned before how we were talk- ing about are we going to be taken? And there was a certain point during this process where we just had to accept that these people weren ' t out to get us— because if they were they would because they could. But at the same time we had to protect ourselves since they don ' t know what we ' re doing since they don ' t understand what we ' re about. Anyway, this concept of an auxiliary had come up because that was the initial plan by the University. We were okay with at least seeing if this would work. We met at the end of October with Vice Chancellor Mitchell- he thought it was terrific and said he would give it the go ahead. He told us to call our attorneys and they would call theirs. The attorneys have the ability to point out gaping holes in everything. It ' s probably for the better There were plenty of unclari- ties — and there v as still this big note on ev- erything saying the ASUC owes blank amount of dollars to UC. That blank became very problematic. Both the fact that it was blank and the attempt to fill it in were done very late in the game. We did not deal with it— which was okay because these other things were much more complex issues That December 4th deadline was peering down at us— and we realized it wasn ' t going to work. Sharon and I would spend two to three hours every other day in meetings. We were also the writers. Writing is extremely powerful. The University was busy so they didn ' t want to do any of the writing. It turns out that working for the University is not as plush of a job as the fable goes. Stephanie Siri would spend two Saturdays at work without a second thought and without much of a complaint, either They were more than happy to let us write and we were more than will- ing to do it because we knew that was the point. Throughout the first draft t)f this stuff we had done that. Not much had developed over winter break We talked to Vicki Harrison and ex- pressed to her our time line: we needed to do it before elections started to get in the way. It was early February and we were start- ing to move at this poim The University tallied up the debt and I tbi ' ik they came up with about $2 million. March 4 was the deadline for constitu- tional amendments to get on the ballot by March 11 [amendments v ere required to re- flect changes in the store ' s operation). We were shooting for March 4 to be our main deadline We had three eight-hour sessions and we got to Wednesday night before the 4th, and that ' s the day we brought garbage bags and taped up the win- dows in the sen- ate chambers [for a senate meeting) We put out the same thing we showed the em- ployees on the overhead projector and that took about three hours There was a favor- able response for the most part. The slide show at the em- ployees ' meeting was difficult. All along we knew that for student government, it would be a difficult day The employees reacted positively. People said to me on occasion, Thanks for doing it. And I said, Hopefully it turns out well. It is disconcerting when you have people whose futures really are in question. I still feel a certain level of discomfort. I couldn ' t get a lot of things they wanted. Throughout this year it strikes me as being a little odd because someone who is 22 years old should not be making these decisions for people. We spent the next week revising. It was March 2 when we made the agreement, two days before we were going to introduce this bill into the senate There was a special meet- ing the night before which ended at 2 am. The next morning ' s Piiilv Cal had an article which said an agreement had been tentatively reached, there were meetings with employ- ees at q a.m., and the senate was in an all- night marathon session And I actually read this to the senate— I was reading this article about our meeting while we were meeting! The senate ' s reaction was remarkable that night, because the visitors, Christina Pak, Scott Kamena, Scott Bonds, and others, were nearly begging for someone to ask questions during their speeches against the agreement, but everyone sat quietly. It looked like your minds were made up. Somebody said that everybody who wa against this agreement all seemed to have gotten us there in the first place. But the nexi two weeks became the political drama. Somebody told us there was an employee meeting on Monday, and we were like, What! Jason Lee, a third-year student, working in School Supplies. Despite a controversial remodel under executive director Byron Kamp in the early 90 ' s, the store continued to slide financially. The store was outsourced in June, 1998, to Follett College Scores. What ' s going on? So we went with [Cal- SERVE senator] Preston Taylor to the meet- ing in the Union, and promptly sort of goi kicked out. What was your reaction when you came intc the room? The meeting was called by Brandes to explain his views to employees. We expected a real cold response. We were just going to sit in the back and ex- pected that would chill it. He said. This is for employees only. [All employees, includ- ing Brandes, were eiiiployed by the ASUC. which was run by Sharon and Lee and the senate. Yuan retorted, They ' re our employ- ees ) You are trying to figure out exactly what to do. It was a response that was just so unfathomable— that sort oi flouting. We left there determined to make some change Go back to a year ago in May. Senate says, Let ' s give Frank another five years even though there are still two years remaining on his cur- rent contract— without a performance review. Employee morale was crushed. You, Sharon, and the senate voted unanimously yes. Why? It was ,1 situ.it ion where I he senate got stuck between a rock .uid .1 h.ud place Frank had come up with an idea that he wanted an extension, and he took it to Grant Harris and 70

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LieRARV FUNDING II I i i RIGHT The Reference Room of the Bancroft Library. VVSisg Falling BY DAN C- S T M ANN 72 c A L r. N O A R