The UOSA Superior Court heard arguments from Oklahoma Students for a Democratic Society and the UOSA General Counsel Monday.

The legal disputes were about who could recall a member of UOSA and the number of signatures that is required to add a referendum to a UOSA election ballot.

RECALL JURISDICTION

The petitioner, Oklahoma Students for a Democratic Society, argued that Matt Bruenig’s signature to recall UOSA Student Congress Vice Chairman Matt Gress was valid despite Bruenig not being a member of Gress’ district.

“I think if policy affects all students, they should be allowed to recall any member of Congress they want to,” petitioner Matt Bruenig said.

At one point of the argument, the debate turned into whether people from Arizona should be able to recall a U.S. senator from California if they felt they were not representing them.

“I think that should happen,” Bruenig said. “The policy that person is voting on doesn’t just affect people of California but everyone.”

Bruenig argued that if a decision affects someone regardless of what district they came from, they should have the right to recall the member.

But UOSA General Counselor Michael Davis said Bruenig has plenty of representation and does not need to attempt to influence districts that may not vote in his favor.

“Mr. Bruenig is already represented by five people in the humanities district,” Davis said. “To think that those five members are not good enough shocks me. The petitioner is saying that we don’t trust the individual districts to make the right decision.”

Davis said the proposals offered by the petitioner would cause chaos and open warfare among districts.

Justice Barrett Powers said the arguments the petitioner was making was abusive to the will of the voters.

“How can you take power away from someone you never put in power in the first place?” Powers asked.

Chief Justice Kyle Eastwood said the recall process being argued by the petitioner would take representation away from districts.

“You have all this time where people can go back and forth recalling people and that does nothing but subvert the will of the people,” Eastwood said. “You could effectively eliminate an entire district just because you don’t like the way someone voted in another district.”

Eastwood said his previous experience in UOSA Student Congress causes another problem in Bruenig’s argument.

“I know that to fill vacancies, even vacancies left by a recall election, are filled through appointments. I’ve sat as the chair of the Congressional Administration committee and appointed people myself,” Eastwood said. “So in the end, we are being even less democratic by allowing people to fill the newly vacant seats without an election.”

Justice Miles McFadden said the ability for a group to appoint their own members in the place of the new vacancy was concerning.

“It seems very abusive to me that people can tamper with the will of the voters by appointing who they want to fill as seat,” McFadden said.

BALLOT REFERENDUMS

The issue of how many signatures it should take to put a referendum on a general election ballot was also discussed.

Bruenig argued with justices about what defined an election and if the 2009 UOSA Spring General Election counted as an election despite low voter turnout. Chief Justice Eastwood consulted Black’s Law Dictionary, the supreme authority on all legal definitions, because the petitioner and the justices could not find a definition of an election in the UOSA Constitution or UOSA Code Annotated.

Justice William Combs argued that because people voted in some districts for congressional candidates that what took place was in fact an election because if the office of president had been listed on the ballot, it would be likely that people voting for congress would also vote for president.

“We are trying to prevent a flood of amendments,” Davis said. “I believe the founders of our government wanted a signature limit to show that there was a constituency behind what would be voted on rather than just leaving it to one vote. When you have one vote, it is careless, but when you have many people it shows consideration has been given.”

Bruenig said if one signature was good enough to recall a member of Student Congress, then it should be good enough to put a referendum on the ballot.

“The Constitution says 15 percent is all that is required to put a referendum on the ballot,” Bruenig said. “Since no one voted for the last president, then it should only take one signature.”

Eastwood said it was a basic part of the democratic system to let students vote on how ever many amendments they wanted.

“It sound to me like [the respondent] wants us to hold the hands of all of our students and tell them how their government is suppose to work,” Eastwood said. “This is their government. If they want to vote on 50 amendments that don’t make any sense, then that is our form of government, and they can do that. Even if there are 50 amendments on the ballot, that seems very democratic to me.”

Bruenig said if students did not want to be overwhelmed with ballot measures then they should put it to a vote of the students in an election through the ballot referendum process.

The UOSA Superior Court will issue its ruling on the two issues within a few days to a week.