CalSERVE

For the upcoming ASUC election cycle, four official parties are running candidates: Defend Affirmative Action Party/Fighting for Immigrant Rights and Equality, or DAAP/FIRE, Student Action, People’s Party and REBUILD.

On March 5, Nicole Anyanwu and Derek Imai, who are both current ASUC senators, announced their candidacies for next academic year’s Academic Affairs Vice President and External Affairs Vice President, respectively.

The ASUC Elections Council met Feb. 28 to conduct a countback tabulation in order to fill former ASUC senator Milton Zerman’s seat. After the tabulator ran, Emily Fregoso, who ran with the CalSERVE party, was officially announced the newest ASUC senator.

UC Berkeley’s oldest active student government party — which suffered significant senate and executive defeats last election cycle — has allegedly encountered another major loss.

The ASUC elections and judicial council officially certified Pedro De Anda Plascencia as the candidate to replace former senator Jenny Jungmin Kim.

The ASUC Elections Council held its final meeting of the academic year virtually on Friday to approve election results for the 2019-20 academic year.

The ASUC Judicial Council met virtually Sunday to discuss the plea deal between the ASUC Elections Council and CalSERVE and to certify the election results from April.

Student Action’s three executive candidates and 11 Senate candidates are no longer disqualified after this process, although final elections results for ASUC Senate and executive positions have yet to be certified.

While calling for the elimination of the party system may seem drastic, at the very least, it will remove the rivalry that has distracted ASUC officials from their responsibilities for too long.

About 200 students attended Wednesday night’s regular ASUC meeting to both voice their support for and condemnation of the Judicial Council’s recent controversial ruling that resulted in the retroactive disqualification of all Student Action candidates in the 2019 ASUC elections.