A campaign to establish a legislative branch in the
undergraduate student government is scheduled to launch next week
and could become the defining issue of the council’s
elections in the spring.
The effort to bring a senate system to the Undergraduate
Students Association Council as soon as next year is being pushed
by leaders of the Equal Access Coalition, a slate created to run
candidates in last year’s election. Slates are coalitions of
students with similar ideologies that form to win seats on council.
UCLA is the only undergraduate University of California campus that
does not have a legislative branch.
Currently, USAC consists of a council of 13 officers and a
judicial board. The council is broken down into three executive
officers, three general representatives and seven commissioners.
Twelve officers have a vote, while the president has the ability to
vote in case of a tie.
The councilmembers vote to fund student groups, pass
resolutions, and to approve or reject presidential appointments.
Grievances within or about the council can be taken to the Student
Judicial Board, whose rulings can still be overturned by a council
supermajority vote.
The proposal, authored by Brian Neesby ““ chief of staff of
the Financial Supports Commission, but not speaking on behalf of
the office ““ would add a senate to the council structure that
has a similar function to the legislative branch of the federal
government. Neesby ran under EAC for a general representative
position in last year’s election, but lost.
“Power needs to be decentralized. … A 13-member council
does not represent 36,000 students,” Neesby said, referring
to the undergraduate population. A change in the structure of
government would require the constitution to be rewritten, a draft
of which Neesby has been working on throughout the year. He plans
to implement the new branch by putting an initiative up for student
body approval in a special election.
For the initiative to pass, 10 percent of the student body must
sign a petition in support of the measure, according to the USAC
constitution. Once the signatures are validated, the constitution
also states that the council has 15 days to either pass the
legislation or submit the proposal to a vote.
But USAC President Allende Palma/Saracho said he would be
opposed to such a form of government because it would increase the
amount of bureaucracy and decrease the council’s efficiency,
as each office’s budget would be smaller. He also said it
would be more difficult for independents to get elected because
slates would simply run more people, potentially making the council
less representative.
The current push for a senate system is not without precedent at
UCLA.
Since the late 1990s, some candidates have run on a platform for
such a change. In 2001, former President David Dahle ran for a
general representative position and promised to work to bring about
this change. Dahle won that year and became USAC president the
following year. While some discussion about the change existed, the
issue eventually settled into the peripheries of
councilmembers’ agendas.
Liz Hall, the executive officer of external affairs at UC
Berkeley, said there are both advantages and disadvantages to her
campus’ form of government, which has an executive branch of
five officers and a legislative branch of 20 senators.
While Hall calls the three-branch government structure “a
more representative voting system,” she said having a smaller
group of people gives a council more opportunity to reach a
consensus.
“I don’t know if it is so much the structure or the
way the students are going to utilize that structure” that is
more important, Hall said.