ASLC meeting hits boiling point

The ASLC got into “hot water” at its Sept. 18 meeting. The issue started to boil when Student Center cafeteria director Scott Strong asked the student government for $300 to purchase a hot water tower that would help those students who bring tea bags or noodles and need hot water.

Council members were in support of the request until ASLC President Carl Oliver reminded Strong that the cafeteria has a budget of $210,000, funds derived from student customers. This riled Strong, who noted that he employed several students in the cafeteria.

Strong and Oliver (and other council members) went at it for a while, sometimes heatedly, until ASLC Vice-President Rose Gelin stood and angrily declared that she wanted to express her feelings. Gelin felt that student council members’ questions had no relevance to the purchase of the water tower. (Members had asked where the money came from to pay the student workers in the cafeteria and about the profits from charging for hot water last year.) Gelin grabbed her belongings and stormed out of the meeting.

Student government members then rescinded their vote and denied funds for the water tower, suggesting that Strong could easily afford it.

In other business:

>Art instructor Raymond Patlan, who teaches the mural class, asked for permission to paint a mural in the Student Center building along the second floor staircase, opposite the bookstore entrance. Patlan’s students brought a scale model of the mural, which is very colorful and “represents the spiritual journey Laney students take to understanding themselves.”

The council approved the mural by nine yes votes and one abstention.

>A representative of the Oakland Unified School District asked for Laney to hold a series of forums on campus to help stop a developer’s proposal to purchase Oakland’s Dewey High School. The land, just two blocks from Laney, would be used for a residential complex. The request was unanimously approved on the condition a room can be made available for the OUSD officials, and Laney personnel, to confer.