Senator Daniel Flores-Resendiz presented senate with a legislation that would eliminate the fall semester awards banquet.
This would make the Falcon Awards Banquet an end of the year affair by only having the awards banquet in the spring semester.
The Awards Banquet Legislation states, “whereas: the ASCC should utilize its resources more efficiently and make an altruistic impact by only having one award banquet to be held during the spring semester.”
To clearly show how the Falcon Awards Banquet uses its resources, Flores-Resendiz presented ASCC Senate with a spread sheet detailing all the cost that go into the Falcon Awards Banquet.
During the presentation senator Alex Cervantes asked what the Falcon Awards were.
Like Cervantes, other senators didn’t know about the Falcon Awards, the applications for scholarships or the fact that there were two banquets.
New senator Kimberly Rios said, “Prior to me joining senate, no I did not [know about the awards banquet] the reason I found out is exactly what the presenter said, only the students that were in the office when the application was due, that’s how I submitted my application. Prior to joining student government I had no idea there was a Falcon award.”
Flores pointed out, “We are spending $1,000 on scholarships and $1,400 on trophies.”
The total cost of the awards banquet according to the spreadsheet is $12,666.
After seeing the figures, the legislation was passed with 16 votes in favor, 4 votes against and 7 senators abstaining from voting.
After the vote, Dean of Student Services Gilbert Contreras said, “Just to follow up on the vote you just took, which is really great because the students voted on what you think is best for fall banquet, I just want you to be prepared because a lot of people on campus have a lot of traditions here and maybe people that are very concerned about the fall banquet being gone.”
Senator Patricia Quezada said, “I wasn’t in senate, but my friends told me about it so I signed up because they’re all in senate so that’s how I found out about it.”
Both Rios and Quezada were in support of the legislation, agreeing that having the awards banquet in the spring would not take away any opportunities from students and would just be postponing the celebration of accomplishments.
Vice President and Chair of ASCC Senate Ivan Oyarzabal said, “It’s a thing about money prioritization. We believe so strongly in tradition that we continue to fund this?…
“As chair I have to facilitate it [open discussion on the topic] so I can’t really have an official opinion, but I would like to get more feedback as to what students want. Would they rather have one [banquet or] two or would they have some other celebration to commemorate the dedication faculty and senate have.”
Another discussion that looms over the Falcon Awards is the claim that the selection process for award winners is unintentionally bias since the majority of applicants are in ASCC government or know someone in ASCC government, then by default the majority of the winners will be connected to ASCC government.
Oyarzabal said, “We’ve discussed the potential bias of the selection process of these awards.
“That’s definitely something that we should continue to talk about and if we haven’t addressed the problem we should continue to address it if this is something that is continuing to happen.”
He added, “[If] we just have this discussion and we don’t progress in terms of legislation then we’re not doing our jobs as senators, but how ever this is an example of that progress moving forward, I think the passing of that bill [awards banquet legislation] is a product of the discussions that were had last year [and] this year and discussions to come in the future.”
