ASSU Constitutional Council rules in favor of SOCC

The ASSU Constitutional Council voted four in favor of Stanford Students of Color Coalition (SOCC) with one abstention on Wednesday after hearing arguments for “The Stanford Review v. SOCC” over the weekend.

The Review argued that SOCC qualifies as an “Association entity” and therefore violated Article 1, Section 7, of the ASSU constitution by not turning its endorsement interview records over to the publication. SOCC, however, classified itself as a coalition of multiple Volunteer Student Organizations, and therefore does not fall under the language of the article.

The council voted to hear the case after The Review requested documents related to alleged misconduct at a SOCC endorsement interview, in which Molly Horwitz ’16 claimed that she was asked an inappropriate question targeting her Jewish faith.

As a result of the decision, in which council members Geo Saba ’15, Stephen Richards J.D. ’15, Jelani Munroe ’16, Sona Sulakian ’16 voted in favor of the respondent, SOCC will not be required to make any documents public. Ireri Hernandez ’15 abstained from voting. A full-length majority opinion will be made public within seven days.

Contact Alex Nguyen-Phuc at nguyenphuc ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Correction: A previous version of this article classified SOCC as a Volunteer Student Organization (VSO), it has since been corrected to a coalition of VSOs. The Daily regrets this error.