Associated Students, Inc. will have to obtain a two-thirds vote from students in order to comply with a system-wide amendment made by the Cal State University Chancellor’s Office – a change made without consulting the 23 ASI organizations across the system, according to ASI Executive Director Richard Haller.
Before the change was made, if ASI dissolved as a corporation, its net assets, other than trust funds, would have be distributed to a successor approved by the CSU Board of Trustees. Under the new decision, the chancellor alone will approve the successor.
Haller said the lack of consultation is not consistent with the level of shared governance expected from the CSU.
ASI will also be required to change its financial reporting standard from a private and/or nonprofit to a governmental reporting standard. Haller said the chancellor’s office has complained loudly during the past years about the amount of work it takes to reconcile two types of financial reports and consolidate them into one CSU system-wide report using government accounting standards.
Student governments across the CSU will have to amend their Articles of Incorporation by Dec. 31 in order to be in compliance with the law, which will be a challenge, according to Haller.
In order to adopt a resolution to amend the Articles of Incorporation, first, a two-thirds majority vote is needed by the members of the ASI Senate. Should the resolution be approved, it is then submitted to the student body, which will also need a two-thirds majority vote. If it is approved by the student body, the resolution will then be forwarded to the California Secretary of State for approval.
The first revision on the same clause in the Articles of Incorporation, initially failed at the ballots and took three to four years to finally approve, Haller said. He said ASI is currently working with its attorneys in search of an alternate means to holding a special election.
In the meeting, Senators Angelica Cortez-Hernandez and David Rose from the College of Health and Human Services questioned how these changes will be implemented and how they will benefit the chancellor.
“What it sounds like to me is that the chancellor just abolished student representation in the corporation,” Rose said.
Haller said the chancellor has unilateral ability to make the changes as long as the CSU Board of Trustees approves it, which it already has.