Election candidates for undergraduate student government say
their major goals include issues such as equal representation,
student empowerment and sustainability.
And in the case of the Bruin Liberation Movement, the
development of a caste system for faculty members denoted by
colored polo shirts.
Four slates will compete in the Undergraduate Students
Association Council elections ““ Student Power!, Bruins
United, the Bruin Liberation Movement and the Future Front.
Elections will take place during fifth week.
Slates are groups of students with similar ideologies who pool
their resources and campaign together.
The students behind Student Power!, the revamped and renamed
Students First! slate, have had council majority for over a
decade.
The name change is part of the natural progression of the work
of the coalition, said Jenny Wood, a current USAC general
representative and a presidential candidate with Student Power!
“We’ve been putting students at the
forefront,” Wood said. “We’re (now) proactively
bringing students together to cultivate their own student
power.”
Student Power! will demand university accountability, provide
opportunities for a holistic undergraduate experience, and mandate
the prioritization of all students, Wood said.
“We want to make sure that the university is truly
accountable to students,” Wood said.
Another slate, some of whom are leaders from last year’s
Equal Access Coalition, is Bruins United. The slate was created to
challenge the reign of Student Power! and its predecessors, who
they believe are representative of only a minority of students.
“Bruins United was created with the intention of giving
students a voice on council that would be willing to express the
interests, needs and concerns of all students,” said Alex
Gruenberg, the current Financial Supports commissioner and the
presidential candidate for Bruins United.
“We’ve had a group in power that’s been unable
to do just that,” he said.
Issues that Bruins United will focus on include unifying the
UCLA student body, providing qualified and diverse leaders, and
ensuring that Westwood remains a student community.
The Bruin Liberation Movement, whose candidates turned heads at
the campaign orientation meeting Tuesday in chicken suits and
pumpkin costumes, said they intend to bring fun and spirit to the
elections.
“Some of these candidates take themselves so seriously,
and you can only do that for so long,” said Alyssa Campos,
external vice presidential candidate. “The Bruin Liberation
Movement is about fun.”
Despite their humorous antics, Campos stressed their concrete
goals such as small-scale low-cost programming and unifying the
student body.
Presidential candidate Jake Strom said the Bruin Liberation
Movement supports erecting a ski lift to transport students from
Sproul Hall to Bunche Hall, free kettle korn on Thursday
afternoons, replacing Murphy Hall with the world’s largest
bounce house, and presenting the option for faculty members to be
paid in arcade tokens.
The Bruin Liberation Movement is running only three
candidates.
UC Berkeley’s Squelch Party, a joke slate loosely
affiliated with a campus humor magazine, has been successful in
recent years at having candidates elected to Berkeley’s
student senate.
“They typically don’t really run to win ““ they
run to bring some sort of humor or perspective to the
campaign,” said Misha Leybovich, president of the Associated
Students of the University of California.
Elected Squelch Party members have tackled serious issues while
serving on student government.
“The humor I think helps the association,” Leybovich
said.
Another new slate, the Future Front, was born out of a group of
members of the California Student Sustainability Coalition, who are
concerned with issues of diversity and sustainability.
“The prerogative of our campaign is to promote ecology,
economy and equity throughout the campus community,” said
Megan Carney, one of three general representative candidates with
the Future Front.
Carney defined the group’s goals as “meeting our
needs without jeopardizing the potential of future generations to
meet their needs.”
“The agenda for sustainability is something that is quite
new to a lot of people,” Carney said. “It’s a
very nascent idea, and its potential is certainly rising on our
campus.”