The Undergraduate Students Association Council is supposed to be a place to affect change and create a good experience for all students. It is supposed to be inclusive. It is supposed to be inviting. It is supposed to be a positive and enriching environment.
I ran for USAC external vice president with the Bruins United slate last year to make the office more independent and inclusive. After I lost, I realized the flaw in that logic. As long as I was preaching my slate’s mantra, I was being neither independent nor inclusive. This is especially true because neither slates’ mission aligned with my vision for USAC.
I don’t regret having run for an office and fought for a cause that I am passionate about.
But in order to achieve my end goal, I cut my ties with my former slate and I did work with outside organizations, while working with my former opponent for the External Vice President’s office on a successful event. I didn’t think of ways to one-up him, but instead united to act on the change that we both envisioned.
While things did not turn out the way that I thought they would during elections, I do not regret how this year turned out.
As I see USAC becoming more and more dysfunctional because of party politics and especially after some very early negative campaigning, I have some advice for candidates this year.
Let’s be clear: The only people you are united with is each other, and the only people you are acting for is yourselves. If you really want to make meaningful change, stop name-dropping your slate every chance you get. Make genuine efforts to talk to everyone, not just the ones that support you. Wear your own shirt more often than your slate’s shirt during elections.
If you win, take it with grace and humility and don’t put your fellow Bruins down. On council, don’t meet with the councilmembers who were on your respective slates behind closed doors and strategize. When you do that, you are perpetuating the hate that was apparent during endorsements and a stigma that USAC is gridlocked in the same fashion that Congress is.
Spend more time working to act together, as a united council instead of a divided one composed of slates that are resentful of one another. And if you lose like I did, remember that there will be a space for you next year. You will find it and make that space even better.
USAC elections are for undergraduate students to choose who will best represent them. Not a popularity contest. Not a resume booster. Not an oppression olympics. Treat elections as a genuine desire to make UCLA a better place and maybe there will be a better voter turnout.
Friedman is a third-year political science student.
I think part of the problem is that in order to secure funding for election season, slates are often important and can demonstrate the seriousness of a candidate and the endorsement of people with a history of making change, They aren’t without purpose. I think unfortunately it may be time for new slates, but as we saw in the special election in fall, they’d probably just be variations of the same thing. I worry that without slate politics and without the funding that can produce, fewer people on campus would pay attention to the election, so even if the candidates were working to make UCLA better, there would be lower voter turnout.
I also think it is a mis-characterization to blame this year’s disfunction on party politics. Much of the problems came about as a result of intolerance and movements which marginalized certain smaller groups on campus. If instead of discussing world issues, USAC restricted itself to being purely a body focused on improving student life, I think that could end many of the problems being talked about. I also think there is strong evidence that it was failure on the part of individual councilmembers, not based on slates. Allyson Bach and Conrad Contreras, for example, appear to truly admire each other and work together easily, despite coming from different slates, and both were effective this year. On the other hand, Negeen Sadeghi-Mohaved and Fabienne Roth were much less effective, but the two of them certainly aligned on the Rachel Beyda issue, despite being from different slates.
Slate politics may not set up the system for positivity, but it brings awareness to USAC elections that at a time of low voter turnout can’t be sacrificed. I also think considering the fact that we live in a nation with an adversarial political system, slates can make politics easier to understand and more accessible for those less interested. The slates themselves need to change and clean up their act, sure, but I’d rather have things in the state they’re in than try to go without or create new ones (which was just as much of a failure with Fired Up last year).
“If instead of discussing world issues, USAC restricted itself to being purely a body focused on improving student life, I think that could end many of the problems being talked about.” I didn’t want this part of your message to be lost because it really is the crux of the problem. Most of the tensions on the USAC, and its most significant public embarrassments, stem from the members’ delusion that they constitute some kind of UN proxy that has an active role to play in world affairs. If the USAC would stop prioritizing picking sides in the Israel/Palestine conflict (there are plenty of appropriate student groups and other outlets available for students who wish to express themselves on that subject to do so) and instead focus on issues affecting student life that they actually have some control and/or influence over, there would be far less tension and fighting, less student funds wasted on pointless and empty political gestures, and perhaps some positive changes to the UCLA student experience as a result of a more focused and cooperative USAC.
This article, along with the first comments made by RB and vincent in response to RB, are by far the best things I have EVER read in the Daily Bruin.
Aurelia, thank you for calling people out on their actions and behavior without maliciousness, highlighting USAC’s room for growth, and placing USAC on the high pedestal it deserves as an entity that can be AND do so much better!