David Zeke is the incoming president of the UCLA Graduate Students Association. Daily Bruin Campus editor Jillian Beck met with the economics graduate student to talk about GSA’s plans for the year and the Graduate Student Writing Center, which is low on funding and is in danger of closing, officials have said in the past.
Daily Bruin: What are some of your goals for this year?
David Zeke: The first thing we want to do is continue last year’s goal of trying to improve graduate student welfare. At UCLA there’s excellent academics, but we want to provide a forum for graduate students ““ to meet their needs whether it’s through events, discretionary funding, meeting with Housing, try to improve graduate students’ (lives), have there be more events, more mingling, have there be more opportunities when students want to explore L.A.
One thing that’s kind of new that we’re really trying to push is improving our communications. We have a lot of programs for graduate students, we throw a bunch of events directly, we support a bunch of journals through GSA Publications, we run a sustainable resource center, we have a movie series, the Melnitz Movies. Once again, through discretionary (funds) we fund all sorts of student groups and we want to do a better job reaching out to the graduate students ““ both about the opportunities that exist but also about what GSA is supporting. I think a lot of times students are a little unclear when they go to an event whether it’s put on by GSA or someone else and I think they also don’t understand necessarily where our funding comes from ““ that’s a big thing that isn’t out there when actually, if you look at our funding, the portion that’s paid through student fees is actually not so large ““ we get a lot of (our funding) from ASUCLA.
DB: A student fee referendum, which would have provided funding for the Graduate Student Writing Center, failed to pass last spring. Since the center can only operate one more year with its current funding, what will GSA do to address the lack of funding for the center?
Zeke: This is an issue we are currently focusing on. We don’t have a solution yet. We’re going to try to see what steps we can take. We understand that students don’t want to pay more fees, so we’re going to meet with them and see what we can do, how big the funding shortfall is. I don’t believe the fee that goes to the writing center is currently adjusted for inflation at all. … I think a referendum like that would have pretty wide support because most graduate students understand inflation and can understand that if you don’t adjust for inflation it eats away at your purchasing power over time, and programs like the writing center will end up in trouble.
DB: How do you plan to get more graduate students involved with GSA and its programs this year?
Zeke: The first thing is, we are going to continue posting on the website and the emails that go out to all graduate students. We also plan to make the website a little more intuitive, add some extra graphics about how GSA works and really try to focus at events that we support, making it more clear what we support and other events we have coming up. And really taking advantage of all the screens that ASUCLA has around Ackerman and other places on campus.
DB: What are your biggest concerns about the experience of graduate students at UCLA?
Zeke: (Los Angeles) is a pretty expensive city and very difficult to get around without a car so this is where the events comes in. Another issue that you have in graduate school is you are very compartmentalized. Your social circle is very small and a lot of times there’s not that much mixing going on. One big role of GSA ““ besides representing student interests ““ is to provide more of a social mixing and also to provide opportunities for graduate students that perhaps don’t have cars to get to do more things in L.A. Everything from ski trips, to trips to the Opera, which are all through bulk discounts, we’re able to actually do (the trips) a lot more affordably than otherwise.
Besides that, we’re also concerned about funding for graduate students. Our funding is pretty low, given the price level in Los Angeles. That’s been an issue for a while. But we understand that the UC isn’t exactly at a time of funding surplus, but that’s something we’re definitely concerned about. Especially for students who lose funding or can only get partial funding. That puts them in a very difficult situation.
The third thing we are concerned about is trying to make sure that despite the budget cuts, funding for research doesn’t decrease. A very high proportion of our graduate students are here to do research and (one goal is to make) sure that UCLA does have top faculty and that doesn’t get cut and that there is research funding available ““ not only to professors but also to graduate students. Keeping those programs from being cut is pretty important to us too.
Email Beck at jbeck@media.ucla.edu.