With an action plan in hand, Anthony Dunbar said he is ready to start making changes at UCLA.
Starting Tuesday, graduate students will be electing new members of the Graduate Students Association.
Dunbar, who is vying for the position of president, is one of the two candidates throwing his hat in the ring.
The doctoral student at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies said he is running because he believes it is time graduate students have a greater variety of qualified candidates from which to choose.
If elected, Dunbar said he plans to broaden GSA’s impact by encouraging more student participation and cleaning up internal politics to create a more effective work environment. In addition, he would like to implement initiatives to cycle a larger portion of GSA funds back into student programs.
Dunbar, who ran for GSA president last year, said he has seen GSA struggling with its inability to reach out to an adequate portion of the graduate population and provide them with useful services. But Dunbar said the very nature of GSA makes it challenging to solve some of these problems. He said in order for GSA to be more effective, its broad structure does not need to be transformed entirely, but that there are some changes that need to be made.
Dunbar said he would like to work within the existing structure of GSA to make resources and programs more accessible for students. Though GSA has a working infrastructure, he said he believes it needs to be more effective in the way it allocates resources “by increasing the availability of resources that can help a broad base of people who don’t know about them.”
Dunbar said if elected he has many changes he would like to make to GSA.First, Dunbar said he would like to reduce his own salary by a minimum of 10 percent and cycle those funds back into the GSA’s budget for student use. Second, he said he will do whatever it takes to increase student participation when it comes to both the election and the running of GSA. “We won’t be taken seriously until our (voter) turnout is at least 25, even 30 percent,” he said.
Third, Dunbar said reducing insider politics is essential to running GSA effectively. By changing the endorsement process for elections, as well as allowing a wider range of graduate students to participate in GSA, Dunbar said he believes he can create an ideal working environment on campus.
He said these changes can only come about from strong leadership and ultimately, his strongest asset as a candidate is his leadership ability; he sees himself as hardworking, passionate, fair, honest and relentless about service, he said.
“In fact, that’s my motto: Service is everything. You can always find a better way to help people,” he said.
Many of his peers seem to agree.Pedro Nava, Dunbar’s classmate and a doctoral student in education studies, said he believes Dunbar’s ability to set goals and achieve them stems from his motivation to make positive changes in his environment. Kelvin White, a doctoral student in information studies, said Dunbar’s mission to get more students involved with GSA is a positive change for UCLA’s graduate population.
Nava said he believes Dunbar’s unique style of leadership stems from his honesty and interest in taking the concerns of others onto himself and has always known Dunbar to take the opinions of others seriously. Dunbar said putting his constituents’ needs before his own is the cornerstone of his leadership style. “If you call yourself a leader and you don’t fight for (others) harder than you do for yourself, you can’t call your style of leadership adequate, let alone good or great,” he said.
White said Dunbar’s strength as a leader also springs from the fact that he is not afraid to face tough issues head on. “He’s not afraid to open up a can of worms or push important issues. He’s strong, he has conviction, and he’s not afraid of the politics, of stepping on toes,” White said.