It was almost 7:15 p.m. as the members of the undergraduate
governing body slowly filled the room and the gavel finally made
three short knocks on the table inside the Gothic-influenced
decorations of room 417 in Kerckhoff Hall-. When the same gavel
sounded to adjourn the meeting a short while later, little had been
accomplished.
The Undergraduate Students Association Council held its regular
meeting Tuesday night with no items on which to vote on their
agenda and a standstill on many of the projects on which it has
started this quarter.
The meeting began with the distribution of official USAC
T-shirts so the council can look unified. President Allende
Palma/Saracho gave a Powerpoint presentation to inform the council
of the minimal progress made on a 10-week course designed for the
council’s interns.
The curriculum will be based on three components, including a
community service requirement, workshops based on leadership skills
and special speakers.
“The goal of the class is to humanize issues that are out
in the global atmosphere. We want to address how these issues
affect UCLA and how we can work to make a change not only in our
immediate environment, but in the greater community as well,”
Palma/Saracho said during his presentation.
A tentative schedule of topics to be discussed at these classes
was also included in an organized grid. The conclusion of the
presentation was that the class has not yet been approved for
credit.
“Our priority right now is to get unit credit for this
class. Our timeline for this is the end of this quarter,”
Palma/Saracho later added.
A longer-discussed item was a report on the progress of the
Expected Cumulative Progress project. The council has organized a
task force to review ECP ““ which requires students to take a
certain number of units each quarter ““ and make
recommendations to improve or eliminate the requirement.
General Representative Tommy Tseng urged participation from the
members of the council. “I would like to ask for more
involvement from your offices; you can even send your
interns,” Tseng said at the meeting.
“This is just so we can keep communication on our progress
open to the council members and don’t have to go back to
review what was discussed every time we meet,” he said.
Eligio Martinez, the academic affairs commissioner, shared his
frustration with the lack of progress made.
“Our biggest obstacle is to get the approval of the survey
from the Internal Review Board. They keep giving us the runaround
and not telling us everything we want to know.”
He said the survey was supposed to have gone out the fifth week
of spring quarter 2004. It was then planned for the third week of
this quarter. Now it has been postponed to the second and third
weeks of winter quarter 2005.
The recent complications and runarounds could seriously threaten
the progress USAC had hoped for on this task.
Palma/Saracho defended the work being done by the council and
argued that they will continually strive to fulfill the major goals
of the council as well as individual office goals.
“Its all about what we can do during winter quarter.
We’ve done a lot of groundwork and we can start working on
areas that we see are problematic,” Palma/Saracho said.