Name: Walter Huang

Year: Junior

Major: Computer science

Running for: Chief Judicial Officer

What are your plans for this position?
The key to my policy is to reduce the time commitment need for USG so more students and student leaders could engage and represent. Our increasing demand in time commitment has deterred a lot of students from running given how busy our campus is. By allowing reps to be more flexible, we could be a better representative body and shift away from an advocacy group of 50 members.

The constitution and bylaws are open to interpretation, as shown by previous CJOs’ interpretations for attendance requirements, and I plan to minimize this requirement for being in USG within reasonable interpretation. My goal is to encourage broader engagement in USG, allowing representatives to spend time with constituents and work on projects rather than sitting in too many meetings.

To make our meetings more productive and welcoming, I would like to work with the new speaker to cut down procedural overhead, so reps could spend more time attending other campus activities and waste less time in less productive procedures. When constituents come, we want to respect their time too. Procedures are necessary, but we should make them efficient. By utilizing more digital media and presentations (a duty for the CJO), our meetings could also be more informative.

What are your plans for enforcing USG bylaws?
I have briefly discussed this plan in the other question. First of all, my interpretation and enforcement will follow the constitution, bylaws and refer to previous CJO interpretations. I will interpret the bylaws and the constitution in a way so representatives who are productive but unable to commit as much time will be able to stay in USG.

Often, our closest ears to constituents are the busiest student leaders who cannot commit a lot of time to USG. Asking for a big time commitment would turn them away from USG. By allowing everyone to engage with less time commitment, our student government could be a lot closer to our constituents.

What bylaws, if any, do you think need changing?
I would like to lead the JBoard to review the bylaws and eliminate outdated and overly complicate clauses. As a student government, we should be more efficient. We have some procedures, like executive committee involvement in removing representatives, are rarely invoked. That would be something to simplify. By having a more efficient bylaw, our operations could be more efficient.

I would also revisit the newly included performance review, which allows Vice Presidents to recommend JBoard hearings for representatives they deemed “dutifully inactive”. Even as a VP at the time, I was uncomfortable about the possibility that a representative could be sent to Judicial Board simply by a recommendation by the VP. I would like to revisit this procedure so representative could feel more empowered in pursuing their projects.