Yiwei Sun: USAC withdrawal from USSA runs risk of losing effective lobbying

Undergraduate student government External Vice President Zach Helder wants to gamble away our student fees with the worst hand at the table.

Last week, Helder proposed a motion to terminate UCLA’s long-term membership in the United States Student Association, a national student-led organization that aims to help students to address issues at the local, state and federal levels. The motion will be voted on Aug. 17.

Helder is pushing to end this collaboration because it costs UCLA $25,000 to send students to USSA conferences. As a replacement, he intends to use the sum to create a professional lobby corps at UCLA and send students to Washington, D.C.

However, Helder’s plan does not lead to effective lobbying, which has been achieved using the platform provided by USSA. USSA allows UCLA students to meet with representatives from other colleges in the country and bring national attention to issues such as sexual violence prevention. Instead, Helder should move to reform our relationship with USSA.

Just to get started lobbying in Washington, D.C., the Undergraduate Students Association Council faces many challenges such as student selection, professional training, networking and persistent campaigning. We could tackle these challenges one by one, but the cost of time and money might be too exorbitant to bear.

Although $25,000 might seem to be a large sum, it is just not sufficient to fund a lobby corps at the national level. UC Davis spends more than $26,000 annually to maintain a lobby corps at just the state level and they were able to meet with California State Senator Ellen Corbett. However, a lobby corps at UCLA would cost more than that at UC Davis because it is pricier to travel from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., than from Davis to Sacramento. Money will need to be spent on lobbying support and a legislative bill research contract with agencies that specialize in writing laws. In fact, no UC campus has a national-level lobby corps.

However, these resources, which are not easy to obtain, are already available thorough the platform provided by USSA. Working with the USSA has allowed UCLA students to bring many issues to a national level and unite with other colleges nationwide to combat issues in a concerted effort.

For example, the recent Ending Sexual Violence campaign to prevent campus sexual and dating violence was supported by several California colleges in USSA’s National Student Congress in 2014 and was able to win many colleges’ votes and was eventually elevated to a national campaign by USSA. As a part of the campaign, USSA pushed further at the federal level, causing Congress to introduce the Teach Safe Relationships Act of 2015.

However, the USSA partnership is not perfect. Because of its large number of members, occasionally our institutional voice can be drowned out.

But being an occasionally obscure member of a large organization is better than establishing our own lobby corps. Considering the past successes achieved with USSA, we can reasonably predict more, similar successes if we continue to work with USSA.

There are also worries about USSA’s staffing. California colleges constitute a significant part of USSA members but none of the staff members are from a California college. University of California Student Association – an organization coordinating 15 UC student governments which works closely with member colleges at USSA conferences to propose a united voice – is considering withdrawal from USSA if this problem cannot be solved.

But this is a problem we can fix, and that’s where we should be putting our efforts. USAC should engage in further conversation with USSA to solve existing problems and design plans for the future.

USAC can use this as an opportunity to work with UCSA to pressure USSA for more UC presence in the USSA staff team. With a louder voice in its conversation with USSA, USAC can then introduce more agendas to the conference table and discuss the collaborative terms in detail.

Putting an end to the long-term partnership with USSA is risky and shortsighted. Instead of changing our focus in the way Helder suggested, we should instead actively encourage USSA to work more closely with them in order to foster a similar understanding on important issues together.

Taking a risk and trying something new is good – but doing so without taking all the variables into account can put you all-in on a bad idea.