Wednesday, 5/7/97 Candidates, platforms stress diversity,
service Aspiring leaders discuss plans before today’s ballot
By Joshua Smith Daily Bruin Contributor With so many options in
this year’s Undergraduate Student Association Council elections,
parties have made their platforms more pronounced to attract
voters’ attention. Unity ’97 has a clear objective that it feels is
evident in its name. They are promoting a nonpartisan agenda and
intend to unify the whole campus because of it. "I think that it is
important to have a president to take the interests of all students
into account," said Unity ’97 presidential candidate Ruben Garcia,
a third-year political science student. "(We) offer the alternative
of one true leadership for everybody." Garcia believes that one of
the main ways to bring the campus together is to literally bring
more students into the student government. Unity ’97 wants to
create a student senate that will enable more students to be in the
decision-making process and free up the executive officers to focus
on the most important issues. "You cannot have 13 people represent
25,000 students," said Garcia. "(We need to) free the executive
board to mind the store." According to Garcia, student voter
registration is one of the issues USAC should be minding, as he
believes that too much energy is wasted trying to register each
student in person. His party is backing a student voter
registration drive that will give students a voter registration
form with their admissions and/or financial aid application. "Our
party believes in strengthening the student voting power," Garcia
said. "We can only do this by registering students responsibly,
which means we register then at the application process. We do not
waste time registering them in the streets." To further increase
students’ consciousness of political and campus issues, Unity ’97
also plans to move USAC meetings to the residence halls from time
to time. "You do not have to wait (for) people to come to student
government. You can take student government to them," Garcia said.
Unity ’97 plans to make student government more accessible to
students through greater visibility of USAC officers. However, the
Access Coalition is promoting an agenda that is reaching out to
students by bringing them more services to the campus. "I really
believe in going to the basics of what student government should be
all about and that is students working for students," said Access
Coalition presidential candidate Ben Hofilena, a third-year
physiological sciences student. The Access Coalition is promoting a
range of new and enhanced student services that includes a 24-hour
study and computing space, more equipment in the Wooden Center,
increasing services to on-campus housing and more lighting on
campus. With the appointment of Harvard University Provost Albert
Carnesale as UCLA’s next chancellor, the Access Coalition wants to
demonstrate to him the need to maintain quality services for
undergraduate students. "He must prioritize undergraduates at this
university," Hofilena said. "Undergraduate education is as
important as research." Increased access to education is another of
the party’s themes. Hofilena expressed the need for
post-affirmative action solutions to university admission and
retention thorough outreach programs and fights against fee
increases. "No one is saying that it is wrong to fight for
affirmative action," Hofilena said. "(The) Access Coalition
believes that we can do this, but at the same time, we need to
outreach and we need to stop ignoring campus issues that affect our
life here at UCLA." For Students First!, one of the biggest factors
that influence a student’s life at UCLA is finances. In response,
the incumbent slate is also mounting a campaign to make student
education more affordable. Advocating an 11 percent fee rollback
and a $10 million Cal Grant increase, Students First! presidential
candidate Kandea Mosley, a third-year African American studies
student, expressed that students’ financial positions at the
university is a critical concern. "I believe it is beneficial for
students to have an affordable education, which means (fewer) hours
that we as students have to work, and it means more time for our
academics and organizations on campus," Mosley said. For Students
First!, not only are material resources important to maintaining a
quality education but social resources play a role as well.
Students First! is backing the diversity requirement campaign that
is fighting to require all undergraduates to enroll in a certain
number of classes that address various cultures and races. "You
bring the campus community closer together by teaching and learning
about the issues that affect the diverse grouping of students at
UCLA," Mosley said. "When you talk about hate crimes on campus, it
is a responsibility of the university to (fight) the ignorance that
leads to the hate crimes." While taking a strong stand on political
issues that affect the student community, Students First! is also
promoting enhanced student services to confront issues on campus as
well. "We believe that it is the responsibility of student
government (to) take a holistic approach to face the variety of
issues that affect student life at UCLA," Mosley said. Advocating
an expanded booklending and food discount program, Students First!
hopes to make USAC much more relevant to students. However, Liberty
’97 believes that the best way to help students is not to determine
which services students need but to allow students to choose for
themselves what they want. The underlying theme of the Liberty ’97
campaign is increasing academic and personal freedom. One of the
ways they want to achieve this freedom is to do away with
university regulations against what the university calls "fighting
words." Liberty ’97 believes that this is just another form of a
hate speech code. They believe that students should have the
freedom to say what they want. "Every time you use a racial epithet
… it is considered fighting words and we do not think that is
necessarily so," said Liberty ’97 presidential candidate Justin
Sobodash, a third-year political science student. For Liberty ’97,
personal liberties not only extend to the social arena but to the
economic arena as well, and they advocating the privatization of
the university. "(Privatization) would make it a less affordable
education, but as libertarians, we are for deregulating the market,
particularly in aiding the poor," Sobodash said. In addition,
Liberty ’97 believes that it can reduce costs by making it easier
for students to receive a refund of mandatorily collected USAC
fees. "No one should get student funding for political activity,"
Sobodash said. "It is not so much a hostility toward the groups. It
is more along the lines that we are standing behind every
individual student’s personal decision." Keeping a tighter lock on
money that is spent by USAC is also a priority of Bruin Vision, who
advocates an end to stipends for student government officials.
"Student (government leaders) should be doing a service and they
should be doing it because they want to make a difference, not
because they want money," said Bruin Vision presidential candidate
Christopher Hecht, a third-year political science student. They are
also advocating that student groups meet a diversity requirement
before they are sponsored by USAC. "I do not see our campus as
being very diverse culturally," Hecht said. (The diversity
requirement) is a first step that I think we need to take for a
better understanding of each other." Along with social and cultural
harmony on campus, safety is a big issue for Bruin Vision.
"Although the UCLA campus is one of the safest of urban
universities, after being on campus for three hours and not seeing
one (community service officer), I think it is just and accident
waiting to happen," Hecht said. Previous Daily Bruin stories Campus
News Bulletin, November 6, 1996