by Jared Sichel
Thursday, Mar. 19, 2015 at 10:14 PM
On Tuesday evening, UCLA’s student government’s legislative body unanimously passed a resolution condemning anti-Semitism on campus.
The move came exactly one month after members of the student government — also known as the Undergraduate Students Association Council (USAC) — debated whether a student nominee’s Jewish background could preclude her from serving in a judicial position for the student government.
The 12 to 0 vote followed weeks of local and national media coverage of the Feb. 10 student government hearing, during which four elected student officials questioned whether Rachel Beyda, an undergraduate pre-law student, could serve fairly as a judge in the student government’s equivalent of the Supreme Court because she is Jewish.
Student government official Fabienne Roth began the questioning by asking Beyda how she could remain unbiased as an active member of the campus Jewish community. After Beyda was asked to step out of the meeting during the debate, a video of the meeting showed that for 40 minutes members of the council went back and forth on the issue, first voting to deny Beyda’s appointment, and then reversing their decision after a school official explained the rules of conflict of interest. The final vote in favor of Beyda’s confirmation was unanimous.
A video of the entire hearing initially was available on the student government’s YouTube page, but was removed several weeks ago, with some members citing concerns for their own safety. On Tuesday, the council voted 8-1-3 to put the video back online, according to the Daily Bruin, UCLA’s student newspaper.
Following the hearing, Roth and the three other students who questioned Beyda’s ability to serve apologized publicly on social media as well as in in the Daily Bruin, and in interviews with the Journal. Roth told the Journal on Feb. 24 that she was looking forward to voting on Tuesday night’s resolution condemning anti-Semitism, and she, along with the rest of the USAC, voted to approve it.
The resolution identifies and condemns specific anti-Semitic and anti-Israel incidents at UC Davis, UC Berkeley and the Feb. 10 hearing at UCLA, and calls on the UCLA student government to “actively fight against anti-Semitism in the future”, and on council officials to participate in diversity training about historical and modern manifestations of anti-Semitism.
www.jewishjournal.com/los_angeles/article/ucla_student_go...