Jasmine Aquino: Allowing USAC to campaign on the Hill would promote political dialogue

The flyers, high-fives and small talk from Undergraduate Students Association Council candidates don’t extend to the Hill, but USAC’s importance does.

The 14 newly elected student officials will institute policies and services with millions of dollars’ worth of student fees. Every undergraduate student pays into USAC, and they are all affected by its decisions.

But while there are more than 12,000 students living on the Hill, the USAC Election Code prevents people from campaigning there.

UCLA Housing needs to promote the political conversations that should be in students’ lives by loosening its restrictions on Hill campaigning. Candidates should be able to talk to residents in areas with heavy foot traffic like outside dining halls.

The current election code policy should not be so strict that it prevents residents from discussing, analyzing and critiquing the USAC candidates and referenda.

The Hill houses the vast majority of first-year students. This is the same group that needs more attention in order to raise student voter turnout and promote civic engagement because its members will be affected by the results the longest, especially the referenda on the ballot.

According to the UCLA On Campus Housing handbook, the term “campaigning” is defined as any display on the part of any person for the purpose of convincing other people to vote for or against a candidate, initiative, referendum, constitutional amendment or recall.

While UCLA Residential Life and Housing do not allow for any campaigning on the Hill, they do encourage their resident assistants and housing government representatives to support positive community engagement in the elections process. Karen Hedges, the associate director of leadership and engagement in Residential Life, said that more than 300 student leaders on the Hill do this through dialogue and passively educating their residents through bulletin boards about the different slates and candidates involved in the elections process.

However, these materials don’t promote the discussion they should. Moreover, resident assistants must maintain a level of public impartiality that draws a blurry line between relaying information and promoting a stance. This policy perpetuates an attitude that drives political apathy.

Removing the Hill’s impartiality would encourage students to have more discussions. It would allow them to begin talking about experiences and the ongoing issues that are in effect at a large institution like UCLA every single day.

Allowing USAC candidates and proponents of certain referenda to campaign on the Hill would encourage students to talk about these issues on a more intimate level. It would urge residents to have late-night conversations around the radical ideas and activism that college students are best known for during their academic careers.

The election board states currently that campaign material of any kind is prohibited within residence and dining halls, but Residential Life adds “campaigning stops at the bottom of the Hill,” according to Hedges.

Both entities maintain the stance during the entirety of the election process because they feel students receive enough information while on campus.

“We restrict campaigning on the Hill because we want to create a space for students to retreat to” said Lindsay Allen, the USAC Election Board chair. “We don’t want to pack every single space at UCLA with USAC discussions.”

This is a fair perspective. The policy should continue to restrict USAC candidates from walking into residence halls and go door-to-door knocking to ask residents to vote for them, but keeping the discussions off the Hill entirely is problematic.

While students are on campus, they are in a rush to get to class or exams during this time of the year. When back on the Hill, students have more freedom and recreational time that they can allot to having these political conversations. Keeping USAC campaigning out of these spaces increases apathy.

Political discussions should happen in every space. Whether on the Hill or on campus, the issues driving the campaign – social justice, sustainability, transparency – are not abolished. These ideas permeate UCLA in the most intimate ways and students should be able to recognize it.

The bottom line is that students cannot simply close their doors on the importance of exercising their democratic responsibilities.