Changes In PUC Student Government, PUC-Cast Dissolved
Posted on 08. Feb, 2010 by Peter Katz in Campus
On November 18, last quarter, SA Senate voted to remove the SA office of PUC-Cast from the ballot for this year. The debate was surprisingly heated, especially given the relative disinterest in PUC-Cast over the last few years. Several Senators, including Executive Vice President Warrie Layon, expressed a reticence to strike the office completely from existence. “I’m just not sure that we’re ready to take this action,” the Vice President voiced in the Senate debate. “I feel like there might be more options.”
President Scott Brizendine and Senator Christina Alba, on the other hand, were rather adamant. “We’re not voting on anything for this year, and we’re not saying that it can’t come back,” Senator Alba told Senate, “we’re simply saying that in its current state, PUC-Cast is not working.” Eventually, Brizendine, Alba, and their supporters won out. PUC-Cast, founded in 2005 by Dustin Comm, is officially no more.
For many, including PUC-Cast editor Avery Lay, the debate was a bit more personal, and a bit more pressing. Faced with impending charges of failure to uphold his duties, Lay could not seem to help but to project his current unsteady ground onto the debate for the next year. According to the PUC constitution, Lay was responsible for eight video podcast episodes each quarter; he had, as of the meeting, made one, and was arguing that his and Video Yearbook editor Anthony Lavine’s Fusion intro video counted as a second—still shy of the six or seven due by that point. There had been immanent potential that the Senate meeting would address the potential of impeachment for Lay up until the day of the meeting.
In the end—or, at least, the end at that point—the conflict revolving around Lay was put to rest by off-the-record deals forged between Lay and a few administrative officers of the SA and some key Senators.
Ultimately, however, it matters little. After one PUC-Cast video of the Christmas tree lighting, and three unproductive weeks of Winter Quarter, in the face of further pressure for impeachment, Avery Lay officially resigned his post as PUC-Cast editor on Monday, January 25. So ends PUC-Cast.
The PUC-Cast budget was absorbed into the C2 budget, and Assistant Editor Craig Hickerson has been made official C2 Video Editor, with Editorial Director Erika Kim taking his position, and a position to assist him, as Omni-Assistant Editor—officially one of the coolest titles of any SA-affiliated officer. We will be experimenting with video as a new medium on our website as both a news and an editorial mechanism; look especially for election coverage as we enter into The War for the Campus Center 2010.
This entire situation is wholly indicative of some of the primary issues with our student government as a whole. America is a republic, and so we feel that any organization, from clubs to SA, should be a republic. What we fail to realize is that republics are inefficient, bureaucratic, and overall only superficially representative of the desires of the student population. Had the C2 not called attention to these goings-on, the student body would never know. PUC-Cast and its convoluted end would have been a blip on an otherwise apathetic radar.
Furthermore, publication editors should not be SA officers. We at the C2 have been crippled in covering this issue simply because of conflicts of interest, particularly the fact that we work with the other SA officers on a day-to-day basis. Lay ran unopposed, and was in fact selected post-deadline last year to serve; if a publication is not functioning properly, it should not be mandated by the constitution that we sustain that publication.
We would say it does not ultimately matter, but in reality, it does. As we have mentioned in previous issues, Senate is currently reconstructing the PUC SA Constitution. If you find any of these events upsetting, or you want to ensure that things like this go differently, you have the power to do so. Talk to your senator, email your Executive Vice President, or write to the C2. If we insist on creating a republic, let us at least do our best to ensure that a republic is what we have created.
On a similar but unrelated note, Video Yearbook Editor Anthony Lavine has been resigned. Details remain confidential.
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