By Jesus Hernandez
The East Los Angeles College Student Nurse Association Club charter was up for suspension during Friday’s Associated Student Union meeting.
The club representative Michael Lingao said the reason for the club’s bad standing was that they were unaware they needed to attend ASU club meetings. He said many of the club’s students after graduating in December and finishing school. were not notified about attending the meetings.
He said he knows it doesn’t look good for them but they were really misinformed.
Linago said he’s trying to fix the problem and talk to the next class so if the board decides to suspend them it will make it easier for the next class to reestablish the club.
The club’s goal is to be mentors for the students in the next semester but if the club gets suspended he understands.
“Someone has to pay for the consequences,” Linago said. He said he hopes to make it easier in the future for the next class to keep the club up to date.
ASU Executive Vice President Alondra Pacheco said she wanted to clarify a comment that was made by another representative of the club in the last meeting.
Pacheco said the club’s representative said that ASU giving the nursing club a suspension would mean ASU would be holding the club back from their mission statement and ability to reach out to other students.
Pacheco said she wanted to clarify that a suspension by ASU does not stop anyone from reaching out to other students or holding meetings and being active.
ASU Advisor Sonia Lopez said the board could not take action toward the club was because they need to go back to the Inter-Club Council by-laws.
The only option in the case of the club is to suspend or revoke. She said that was the issue in the last meeting.
She said the board approved those two options last meeting. She said she wanted to be clear the board has not taken an action to vote either way on the club right now. so there are no changes.
Lopez said the board needed to go back and look at the ICC by-laws and the agenda that they approved at the last meeting. Pacheco clarified to Lopez that the club is in bad standing and they went into bad standing after their second absence.
They will continue in bad standing until ASU makes a decision.
Lopez said the club is in bad standing but nothing changes for the club until the board addresses whether or not they are revoking, suspending or continuing the club’s position with ASU.
ASU Vice President of Advocacy Steven Gallegos said the ASU members need to re-entertain the motion of the ICC by-laws.
Pacheco said the club was given warnings previously and the ICC team put in a lot of work.
It would be a slap in the face to let them go with a warning and it makes them feel like their work is not valued.
Pacheco said the ICC team encouraged the board to decline this warning and the ICC team is looking at a different way to approach this to be more student friendly.
Linago said that he appreciated everyone and that with this vote, which ever side is decided on, he is going to try to make the club better for the future so it never has to get to this point again.
After many debates back and forth, the board had one yes vote, and seven no votes on whether to suspend the nursing club. With seven no votes, no action was taken with the ELAC Student Nurse Association Club.