Editorial: USAC goals must have realistic, clear focus

During a recent meeting of the Undergraduate Students Association Council, members discussed prospects for the council’s central goals for the coming year called action agenda items.

While some proposed goals offer promise and a way to measure the council’s success, others seem like they would be better suited to an individual council post.

For better or for worse, these goals are often the only major achievements that are stamped in the memory of students who follow the council’s contributions to UCLA. There are four suggested goals thus far and of them, only two are noteworthy.

One goal ““ increasing transparency of the council so the public is more informed of their progress ““ is a worthwhile pursuit. After all, students pay for the council’s nearly $3 million budget through mandatory fees.

This task is also concrete enough to allow different ways to accomplish it, but also has features that allow outsiders a way to measure progress and success ““ qualities that all of these goals should have.

The second of the proposals is to increase campus safety, but it is too lofty of a goal to be a council-wide task. Historically, the idea to increase campus safety has resurfaced in some form almost every year under the platforms of the Facilities commissioner.

While campus safety is a very important issue, it is not something that should be mentioned as a council-wide goal unless there are specific projects that the council as a whole plans to take on that cannot be accomplished by the Facilities commissioner.

The third proposed goal is familiarizing students with the surrounding Los Angeles area and its culture with events such as concerts.

Again, this goal seems like it should be accomplished through the Campus Events Commission and Cultural Affairs Commission, not the whole council.

To take an already existing mission from a commissioner’s post and generalize it to the council may not only diffuse and weaken the goal’s achievability, but may also use up resources that could have been saved for other tasks.

The last of the proposed USAC action agenda items is the movement to increase student voice and voting power on existing administrative committees.

This is a goal that is often thrown around with little success achieved at the end. We understand this task would be a difficult one to accomplish and recognize that now, more than ever, seriously pursuing this is a necessity.

With UCLA’s new chancellor, there is a prime opportunity to implement new changes.

In addition to the proposed goals, USAC should also invest time into materializing a plan for decreasing the costs of textbooks and other course materials.

With the existence of programs offering to provide access to textbooks online at a minimal cost, or the book-lending program out of the Financial Supports commissioner office, the council should organize a systematic way to produce a comprehensive solution for addressing the rising cost of textbooks.

Though there is now a Bruins United slate majority on council, they must be careful to not abandon some of the long-term goals of the Students First! slate, such as making UCLA as affordable as possible. One avenue for addressing this concern is the cost of textbooks.

The council should also be careful to not abandon some of the other wider goals of Students First!, including increasing diversity and access to UCLA.

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