The petition requests that the Constitutional Council "order Stanford
Student Enterprises to release its financial statements..."  The
petitioners' grounds for making this request are that the they deem this
information to be non-proprietary.  I would like to argue that 1) neither
the constitutional council nor the petitioners currently have the authority
to judge what is and is not proprietary, and 2) the Council does not
currently have the constitutional authority to order the release of these
statements without changing the Joint By-Laws.

As Financial Manager, I am not allowed to release the financial statements
that the Board of Directors has deemed proprietary until the the By-Law
forbidding me to has been overturned.

Appendix II, Section 1H of the Joint By-Laws states, "A specification of
what information held by Stanford Student Enterprises may be considered
proprietary.  Proprietary information shall be available to the President or
any member of the Association legislative bodies upon request, but may not
be more widely released without the consent of the Board of Directors or its
designee."  

Section 2 continues, "Copies of the policies specified above, as well as
annual budgets indicating the overall revenues and expenses of individual
business projects and the amount contributed by Stanford Student Enterprises
to the Association endowment, shall be provided by the Board of Directors of
Stanford Student Enterprises (or its designee) to the President or any
member of the Association legislative bodies upon request.  Any proprietary
business information or employee information contained within these policies
or budgets may not be more widely released without the consent of the Board
of Directors or its designee."

The Board has declared certain information proprietary, and I must uphold
that.  Moreover, the petitioners' suggestion that the lack of justification
for SSE's rejection of their request in the spring means that "it [SSE] has
implicitly accepted our [the petitioners'] argument that the documents
requested are indeed public records" is false and unsubstantiated.

The petitioners must challenge the constitutionality of this By-Law, not the
act of refusing to release the financial documents.  If the
constitutionality of this By-Law is overturned, then a new clause must be
added to the governing documents indicating who has the authority to deem
information proprietary.  Only then can the petitioners continue with their
request that SSE be forced to turn over its financial statements.

In addition to the above argument, I would like to point a second reason to
call into question the grounds for the petition.

Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution reads, "The Constitutional Council
shall adjudicate all cases where the constitutionality [under the ASSU
Constitution] of an act by an Association legislative body, the President of
the Association, or any members of the Association is called into question."

Neither SSE, Ross Davisson, or myself fall into any of those categories.  I
am not a student, and therefore not a member of the Association, nor am I an
Association legislative body.  The same can be said for Ross in the spring
of last year and for SSE.

Article V, Section 8, Subsection B6 states, "The Financial Manager shall
not, during his or her term of office, serve as an elected member of an
Association legislative body, the President of the Association, or the Vice
President of the Association....The Financial Manager need not be a member
of the Association."

Constitutionally, the council is not allowed to adjudicate this case because
the act in question was not performed by someone that meets one of the three
requirements.  

Based on two points above -- 1) the By-Law itself giving the Board authority
to withhold information must be challenged, not the act of withholding it,
and 2) the fact that no act was perpetrated by a member of the Association
or legislative body, and therefore the CC cannot adjudicate -- I propose
that this case be thrown out and the petition be denied as it currently
reads.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Regards,

David Endelman

-- 
David Endelman
Financial Manager
ASSU
(650) 725-1461
(650) 725-9523