Friday, May 22, 1998
Continuing the fight to put students first
USAC: President-elect Stacy Lee plans to promote awareness of
affirmative action, increase involvement in campus politics
By Dennis Lim
Daily Bruin Contributor
A four-year veteran of USAC politics, Stacy Lee has now won the
president’s office. The former external vice president, Lee won the
presidency in an election year that saw the break down of Students
First!, the political slate that had dominated student government
for the past three years and the formation of two new political
slates, Praxis and Sanity ’98.
With relative ease, Lee swept the elections along with her
fellow Praxis members, taking all 10 positions they ran candidates
for. Now two weeks after her momentous victory, Lee speaks to the
Daily Bruin about the elections, affirmative action and her
childhood fantasies.
What do you hope to accomplish next year?
Next year I’m really excited about all of the energy we have on
campus. People are really interested about getting involved in
student government and any type of activism going on at campus. We
want to make sure not only to create avenues for people to get
involved, but to make sure that people can work together on the
issues.
We want to raise awareness of student government and create ways
for people to feel like they have input in the decisions that we
make. USAC is out there a lot more often, in terms of being on
campus, talking to people, increasing awareness. That’s one of our
most important parts.
As external vice president (EVP), you have been actively
involved in USAC; what in particular about being EVP will help you
as president?
The president’s job is a lot easier than EVP; just in terms of
time commitment, being EVP is horrendous (laughs). There’s just so
much responsibility. I’m kind of looking forward to the presidency.
The way I’ll have to interact with people; I’ll have a lot more
time to develop more personal relationships with administrators,
student groups and all that.
As EVP you talk to those people and the University of California
Student Association (UCSA), the United States Student Association
(USSA), and you make sure things happen over here and there, and
you talk to all sorts of people along the way. So I think this
stuff will be a breeze compared to EVP.
When did you first know you wanted to run for president?
When I was three (laughs). It happened the way I think it should
happen. I was considering it and I was also asked by people to run.
I don’t think anyone should ever run for government because they
are compelled by their own ambition to run, because then who and
what are you really serving? But (I did it) because people had
expressed confidence in me, and I had also considered it because of
the admissions statistics coming out.
We knew what the numbers were going to look like but when we saw
the real numbers, it made me sick. It was during spring break and I
was at a friend’s house and we were watching TV and we saw the
Berkeley protest and we said, "Oh my God! The numbers are out." I
couldn’t think of anything else except for our campus; what would
happen to our campus.
Would we be able to continue our legacy of activism, fighting
for students’ rights and social justice, or would it all fall
apart? It could have easily happened that way while I was thinking
about that.
That is very critical for people who are running for political
office. Not just do it for your own personal ambition, but have a
reason beyond that and have people to vouch for the work that you
have done and have some sort of experience and really care about
students. I’ve always had those qualities but I was reluctant to
put myself in that position unless I had that vote of confidence
from people that believed in me. And there had to be an issue to
really motivate me to come back.
Next year as president you are going to be the first president
to deal with the direct effects of Proposition 209, with a freshman
class admitted without affirmative action. How do you plan on
dealing with that?
It will be really important to keep the freshman class well
informed about what affirmative action is. There is a lot of
misinformation out there. Who’s affected by it, including Asian
Americans, low-income families; people just don’t understand what
it is, and when the media only uses four soundbites to describe it,
usually it comes down to preferential treatment vs. equal
treatment.
It’s a way to manipulate people’s judgment on the issue and it
will be very important, through as many formats as possible, to
make sure that we explain what a critical role affirmative action
plays in our society and must continue to play.
Also, a lot of people just don’t understand what it is. They’ll
say, "I don’t like it because it does such and such," and then you
tell them, "well did you know that it does this," and they say "Oh
I didn’t know that."
You get into these conversations and hopefully people will find
that there are avenues for them to get the information they seek.
That will be really important.
Next year, can we expect more of what happened at Royce Hall
this week?
The tactics that we take all depend on the actions of the
university and if the university decides to be completely
non-responsive or decides to tokenize us and reject student
opinion, then tactics will have to be heightened because that is
the only way to get their attention.
It is up to the administration. If they want things to go there,
then they can.
Next year John Strelow, a member of Sanity ’98, will be on
council. How do you feel about that?
We purposely didn’t run a full slate this year because we wanted
to make sure the people we ran were qualified for the positions.
When we made that decision we knew that there would be someone from
another slate to fill that position and we thought that it would be
OK to have a different point of view on council.
We expect that he will bring a little excitement to meetings. I
want to talk to him, see what his goals are for next year. I need
to make sure that he works on issues and programs for students.
Whatever his point of view of what a student is, who a student is
and what student issues are, he needs to do work – and not just
policy-based work but programs from his office.
It will be interesting. I hope that he doesn’t feel like people
are going to shut him out from the get-go but as long as people are
open and willing to talk to each other, it should be fun.
This year’s election saw a sharp drop in voter turn-out. Do you
think that says anything about the election results?
Most people I talked to didn’t feel like there was a need to
vote because they didn’t take Sanity ’98 seriously. That was the
feeling that we got from people that we usually depend on to
vote.
I don’t think it’s because people think student government is
ineffective, which is what people were saying. That’s one of the
things that we want to work on. We want to increase our power base
of people who are concerned about student government.
MARY CIECEK
Stacy Lee, next year’s USAC president, has big plans.