Submission: Bruin Alliance letter requests change from USAC

Editor’s note: The following is an open letter from members of the Bruin Alliance slate to the Undergraduate Students Association Council, endorsed by 17 student organizations. The letter’s authors plan to present it at tonight’s USAC meeting. The text was edited for length.

To the members of the Undergraduate Students Association Council,

In the 27th Amendment it is written “No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.” The United States Congress has acknowledged the conflict of interest associated with elected officials raising their own pay, and it is time that you, USAC, do the same. The recent stipend increase is a glaring conflict of interest. If not adequately addressed, it will continue to erode your credibility as a body that fairly represents student interest.

On Aug. 6, you voted 8-1-0 to raise council stipends 90 percent, to $672 per month. This raise cut $35,000 from the Student Organizations Operational Fund – the primary funding source for many student groups. Despite allocating 80 percent of the year-long fund in fall quarter (up from 60 percent the year before), the average allocation of funding for student groups was reduced by almost a quarter, from $480 to $370.

Despite public outcry, you stood by your vote, instead offering to explain your decision to the student body through a Daily Bruin submission and a town hall meeting. That offer was made three months ago. Where is the submission? What happened to the town hall meeting? Elapsed time will not change the fact that you voted to compensate yourselves at the direct expense of the student body. As that student body, we still deserve an explanation.

Tragically, this entire conflict stems from an avoidable lack of foresight and communication. A vote as potentially divisive as this had no business being held over summer, at a time when the student body was not available for input (not to mention your three councilmembers who could not be in attendance). The backlash from this vote has been severe, and frankly, predictable. In a Daily Bruin poll six days before the vote, 74 percent of respondents opposed USAC increasing their own pay. Inadequate time was devoted to researching the ramifications of such a vote, and warning signs were ignored.

Even in the aftermath, you have failed to grasp the scope of your blunder. You have ignored a student petition to defer the stipend increase until next year, and multiple Daily Bruin editorials criticizing the vote have gone unaddressed. Instead, the only response you have provided is an acknowledgement of the adverse effects of the stipend increase, and a refusal to change course.

In times throughout its history, USAC has demonstrated courageous leadership. Dogmatic adherence to past decisions is not courageous leadership. Making unfulfilled promises is not courageous leadership. Willingness to admit mistakes coupled with corrective action, however, is courageous leadership. USAC, you have yet to demonstrate courageous leadership on this matter.

USAC, you have jeopardized your perception as representing the best interest of students, but opportunity still exists to reach a positive, constructive conclusion. It is the conflict of interest associated with raising one’s own salary with which we take issue. As such, we propose a solution that all sides can support:

We the students call you to defer the current stipend increase to next year’s council, pass a bylaws amendment delaying all future stipend increases until the term following the vote and return the newly freed money to SOOF.

We acknowledge the sacrifices councilmembers must make to hold office, and we share USAC’s desire to eliminate personal finances as a barrier to participation. By keeping the stipend intact for years to come, future candidates will not be required to choose between student government and financial stability. Current council, you will return to the stipends you originally received, but was this not the stipend you deemed acceptable when you first made the decision to pursue office?

Although we accept and understand that it may be impossible to immediately reallocate the funds directly into SOOF, we ask that the funds that were taken from the students ultimately be returned to the students. If funds cannot be allocated this year, why not carry a surplus in SOOF into next year? With a record number of clubs applying for SOOF this year, the perception of SOOF as an underutilized fund unworthy of extra funding is rapidly changing.

USAC, regardless of how you reallocate the funds from your stipend increase to the students, it is most important that you do not idly let this issue persist. Your mission is to represent the interests of the students, and we have made our interest in this matter loud and clear. We are waiting. Are you listening?

Mike McBirnie, fifth-year aerospace engineering student

Taylor Bazley, fourth-year political science student

Nicole Fossier, fourth-year political science student

Brian Hertz, second-year human biology and society student

Anais Engel, second-year environmental science student

Dan Block, fifth-year economics student

The following organizations endorsed this letter:

Hillel Jewish Student Association

Afrikan Student Union

Roosevelt Institute

Bruin Republicans

Bruin Democrats

Young Americans for Freedom

Young Americans for Liberty

Bruin Entrepreneurs

Bruin Marksmanship Society

Theta Xi

Bruin Mentors

Bruin Adventurers

American Enterprise Institute Student Organization at UCLA

Lebanese Social Club

Bruin Alliance of Skeptics and Secularists

Social Awareness Network for Activism through Art

Hermanos Unidos