Emily Resnick is the incoming president of the Undergraduate Students Association Council. The Daily Bruin talked to the fourth-year psychobiology student about student engagement and issues facing USAC and the university.
Daily Bruin: The incoming freshman class is the largest in UCLA history. How does USAC plan on incorporating these students into campus and making them active participants in the affairs of the campus?
Emily Resnick: I served on USAC as a general representative and one of the things that was hardest is that a lot of students don’t know about USAC. Until they know about us, we need to be active and focus on USAC visibility. We’re putting on a bunch of events first week to get the word out there, things like “Take it to the Hill” and different things about USAC. Also, sending emails to get our presence out there. We also set up an Interact live chat on the (USAC) website and then working with ASUCLA on marketing techniques to let students know who we are.
DB: Student involvement has been a problem for USAC in the past. How are you going to get students involved in student government?
ER: We’re focusing on getting out there for all of the new students. All of our officers will be out there at the Activities Fair, accepting new applicants (to our offices) and welcoming new students and a few of the officers have specific things scheduled for. This year we have a Presidential internship, the External Vice President’s office has a student activist program and there’s also an Internal Vice President fellowship. All of those three are geared toward new students, (both) freshmen and transfers, to give them a rundown of USAC and UCLA.
DB: Looking at the hard economic times for higher education, what plans does USAC have to help advocate for more funding for public institutions like UCLA?
ER: That’s at the forefront of our agenda, making sure that students can attend this whole period (of their education) and also making sure they have a good time here. We’re thinking of ideas like bringing different regents and members of UC campuses to the campus so that students can understand the fees. We often look at these things and don’t understand them, and we can talk about them until we’re blue in the face but that’s not going to help unless we understand why these things are happening. These are some of the big things in education. We’re also working on organizing a student lobby day.
DB: Your party, Bruins United, have a majority of the seats in USAC now, a radical change from last year. In the past there have been unity problems because of slate divisions. How do you plan to address that?
ER: In my mind, and I vow to uphold this, slates do not exist in the council. Slates are necessary for election time. (But) we are one council, we are trying to do what’s best. Right now my party is USAC. Party politics will not exist. I really think that. I was on council last year; the place the council is at right now is light-years ahead of last year in terms of bonding. … One of things we talked about is supporting each other’s initiatives. We’ll be successful, not if individuals are successful, but if we as a council are successful.