There’s one word in the phrase “student government” that is often overlooked and consistently underrated. I’ll give you a hint: It’s not government.
For anyone seeking to understand or be involved in student government at UCLA, it’s crucial to recognize that it is an educational experience – as much classroom as Congress. And as with any learning experience, student government operates largely on a cycle of trial and error.
Here’s the most recent iteration:
Error – the Undergraduate Students Association Council, UCLA’s student government, thoughtlessly voted to raise the pay of sitting members.
Trial – the council was criticized for six months by a range of students and student leaders, including the Daily Bruin’s editorial board, of which I’m a member.
So I think it is understandable that I was considerably relieved Tuesday when the council unanimously voted to add a short, but vital, sentence to its bylaws: “No policy, varying the compensation for the services of councilmembers, shall take effect until an election of council shall have intervened.”
Naturally, it was satisfying to watch the council endorse an idea I believe in. And I don’t just mean the idea that sitting members of an elected body shouldn’t raise their own pay. I certainly believe that, as does a majority of The Bruin’s editorial board.
But I also believe that student government, just like student journalism, for instance, needs to be understood as a learning exercise.
USAC must be approached as government-in-motion, a work in progress. That way, councilmembers can craft better and better governments every successive year.
Let me give an example. Last year, USAC President David Bocarsly led the effort to open a council endowment with $100,000 of leftover funds. Better yet, he convinced the UCLA Foundation, the school’s donation and investment body, to manage the endowment free of charge. But somebody forgot to draft up an agreement between the council and the UCLA Foundation. So earlier this year, the foundation took a $6,500 fee out of the endowment – mistakenly, so it claims – and the council had to ask for that money back.
The moral of the story: Bocarsly’s idea to invest the money was a good one – a way to grow the council’s money and impact over time. But like almost everything the student government does, it needed ironing out.
In the near future, the council will face resolutions about important political issues and proposals to make it run more efficiently, transparently and effectively. It needs to approach each one of those with an open mind and realize that the whole endeavor of student government is about self-improvement on personal and organization-wide levels.
Ironically, the council seems to understand this idea, but only when the stakes are low. On Nov. 12, the council quietly and unanimously passed a bylaws amendment concerning the way students are appointed to two prominent financial committees. It was pretty apparent that the bylaws change made sense – so the council changed the bylaws.
Councilmembers have to not only be open to this type of change, but also seek it out. So far, the only councilmember to have demonstrated a willingness to actively pursue better government is Internal Vice President Avi Oved, who proposed the stipend amendment and was the only councilmember with the wherewithal to vote against the pay raise in the first place. Interestingly, three councilmembers were absent during the original vote, but none of those three objected after the raise was passed.
Oved’s office is currently working on another amendment that deals with the process of passing resolutions through USAC. When this topic comes to the council table, members should approach it with the same flexibility they belatedly displayed when revising the bylaws about stipends.
And other rule changes that have been ignored in the past should be revisited. In the spring, the council tabled a proposal to change the nature of the general representative position to add some financial responsibilities to that role. Once again, council needs to show that it is at least amenable to this type of change by raising that issue once more.
At the risk of being repetitive, the point is this: Student government is student government.
The people involved in USAC are not just members of government, they are students of government. One thing is certain – they will make mistakes. The test of a truly judicious and effective council is whether it is willing to recognize those mistakes and work to correct them.