[990] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
UA-GSC-JUDBOARD RULING on Tech v ASA
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dilan Seneviratne)
Thu Dec 13 18:18:01 2001
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Message-ID: <200112131756.MAA27990@melbourne-city-street.mit.edu>
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 12:54:12 -0500
From: Dilan Seneviratne <gsc-president@MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
FYI
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---FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE---
UA-GSC Judicial Board Appeals Case
The Tech
vs.
Association of Student Activities Executive Board
December 13th, 2001
I. Violation
The UA-GSC Judboard (hereby The Board) finds The Tech in
violation of both the spirit and purpose of the MIT
Association of Student Activities (hereby ASA) Rush Rules
2001 for printing prominent recruitment advertisements, and for
continuing this behavior following specific written and oral warnings.
The Board believes The Tech did not take adequate steps to
understand and comply with the Rush Rules 2001 (hereby The Rules)
as emailed by the ASA on Sat. June 30th and Thu. August 16th.
The Tech published a full-page color recruitment advertisement on
the back page on August 22, 2001 without seeking a poster-related
exception from the ASA. The ASA notified the Tech of the violation, and
warned of the consequences of future violations. On August 24, 2001
the ASA wrote a clarification of the The Rules that allowed The Tech to
print limited house advertisements. The Tech violated this attempted
compromise with its August 24 and August 25, 2001 recruitment advertisements
and by allowing the date and time of a Tech recruiting event to be printed
in the Daily Confusion. The combination of these four violations
demonstrates a clear intent to recruit and as such violates the spirit and
purpose of The Rules.
II. Ruling
The Board overturns the ASA ruling that revoked The Tech's business
office space. The ASA failed to follow the guidelines of Section
4 (Protests) of the ASA Office Space Allocation Policy by
(1) not providing The Tech with a clear indication of the
ruling under consideration during the hearing, and (2) not
including a Dean in the meeting. As such the ASA did not give
The Tech full due process.
The Board ruling shall therefore be confined to the issue of
Activities Midway space that was discussed during the initial protest
hearing. The Board rules that:
1) The Tech shall contribute $2000 to ASA by June 1st 2002
to be used to benefit all student groups in the Activities
Midway 2002.
2) The Tech shall be on a period of probation until the Activities
Midway 2002 at which time the ASA will determine whether The Tech
is acting in adherence to the Rush Rules 2002. In particular printing
house advertisements during rush will be considered a violation.
The Tech can choose to fill empty space in the paper with advertisements
for the Midway provided by the ASA at no cost.
3) If The Tech is not in adherence at the end of their probation period
they will lose their privilege to attend Activities Midway 2002.
The ASA can take into consideration 1) in determining The Tech's
adherence to Rush Rules 2002.
III. Suggestions for ASA
1) The Tech office space allocation should be considered under the
normal allocation process based on degree of office space
utilization. A protest hearing should also be granted to The Tech
with a clear indication of the office space utilization under question
and with accordance to the guidelines in Section 4 (Protests) of the
ASA Office Space Allocation Policy.
2) The ASA should provide student groups with a more specific
set of rush rules and examples of violations for 2002.
This decision is final and was agreed upon unanimously by the six members
of the UA-GSC Judicial Board:
Alan Groff
Soulaymane Kachani
Leah Schmelzer
Adrienne Yandell
Johnny T Yang
Sanith Wijesinghe
If you have any questions or need any clarification about the ruling,
please contact the board chair Sanith Wijesinghe by email at
sanith@mit.edu.
UA-GSC-JUDBOARD
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