Thursday, November 13, 1997
USAC loses bid to allocate funds
OUTREACH:
Program’s
$3 million to be handled by UCLA administrationBy Stefanie
Wong
Daily Bruin Staff
With the death of affirmative action, the Undergraduate Students
Association Council (USAC) has increased its focus on community
service and outreach in order to combat the possible result of a
lack of diversity.
With this new focus, USAC has stressed the need for more student
participation in outreach and more funding for student-initiated
community-service programs.
Earlier this quarter, USAC tried to access a $3 million pool of
money specifically set aside by the UC Board of Regents for the
nine universities in the UC system to use toward community service
and outreach.
But USAC was later informed by administrators that students
would not be able to directly access this money.
"Right now the information that we’ve received from the UCLA
administration is that the money that the UC Outreach Task Force
allocated for community outreach programs was not earmarked for
programs that were student-initiated," said USAC President Kandea
Mosley.
The UC Outreach Task Force was a committee created after the
adoption of Regents Item SP-1, which banned the use of affirmative
action in university admission policies.
Without affirmative action, the regents realized there would be
a need to increase and improve the university system’s outreach
efforts.
The task force in turn hired an independent consulting group to
gather information about current practices and programs of outreach
and which programs worked in what areas.
With this information, the consulting group and task force met
and proposed a report to the UC Regents.
The report found there were four areas of outreach that the
universities needed to focus on.
The four areas were informational outreach, the creation of a
regional collaborative in which universities will work with local
school districts, the strengthening of academic development
programs and finally, research and development for new outreach
programs.
"We’re talking about outreach not only from K-12 for
undergraduate programs but also outreach for professional schools
and graduate studies," said Jane Permaul, assistant vice chancellor
of the student affairs administration.
The report also placed a $60 million price tag on the UC-wide
project.
"(The task force is) saying that to do this well and thoroughly
and adequately, and to have a long term impact on outreach, they
estimate it to cost $60 million," Permaul said.
The regents adopted the recommendations in their entirety and
pledged $60 million to the efforts.
However, only $3 million is available, and individual campuses
are now expected to implement the plan.
Individual campuses must submit proposals stating how the money
will be used, which of the four areas will be addressed and how the
proposed programs fits into the university’s and UC system’s
overall goals.
Because of the specifics that need to be addressed, it is not
feasible that the student programs will be able to access the
money. Instead the money will be used for university-initiated
outreach.
"(The rules) almost automatically exclude (students) from having
a piece of the pie directly," Permaul said.
However, student participation and volunteers are included in
some of the new programs. These programs are currently being
developed by the UCLA administration and will receive funding from
the $3 million pool.
"We’d like them to be involved in meaningful ways and play very
meaningful roles, but (the administration and students) haven’t
been able to identify them yet," Permaul said.
Despite not being able to directly access the $3 million,
Permaul does not wish to discourage students and the work that they
do.
Administrators believe student-initiated programs are important
and need to be continued.
"One thing we’ve always said to student government is that if
they think they have a good proposal, they certainly can look for
money anywhere and everywhere they want to," Permaul said.
"If they want our opinion and want us to be helpful to the
extent of where we know of sources, we’re not going to hold it from
them," she added.
Members of USAC hope the administration and student government
can work together and that collaborative efforts will be made.
However, USAC is unsure of the amount of assistance they will
receive from the administration.
"It’s too early at this point to determine the extent to which
the administration is prepared to support student-initiated
community outreach and the expansion of these projects on campus,"
Mosley said.
"We’re hopeful that starting winter quarter, we can really get
the campaign off the ground, and that the administration and
student government can work together to ensure that the
student-initiated outreach will continue to be prioritized as a
major university program."