Undergraduate student leaders will provide a platform throughout fall and winter quarters for students to call elected officials.
The undergraduate student government’s office of the external vice president started Phone Banking Fridays on Kerckhoff patio from 12 to 3 p.m. last Friday for students to call state representatives and express support for targeted state bills.
The EVP office partnered with the Student Wellness Commission last week to conduct phone banking sessions in support of Senate Bill 169, which would codify Title IX guidelines created by former President Barack Obama’s administration into state law. However, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed the bill Monday, saying he thinks there needs to be more reflection by legislators on current laws governing sexual harassment and sexual violence.
Phone banking allows constituents to call their representatives’ offices and state their opinions directly. External Vice President Chloe Pan said that students with no phone banking experience can drop in and read a provided script in a call to a legislator’s office to express support for the bill being targeted that week.
State Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, introduced SB 169 in response to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ announcement last month that President Donald Trump’s administration is rescinding Obama-era Title IX guidelines.
Student Wellness Commissioner Christina Lee said SWC partnered with EVP to target SB 169 because she thinks the bill would have created a safe environment for students. She added she felt disheartened after DeVos’ announcement.
“As a nation, we had worked so hard so that people would feel safe reporting sexual crimes,” Lee said. “It is already a crime that is so underreported and stigmatized –survivors are not willing to come forward because the legal process is so hostile.”
Pan said her office is advocating to make sure that California is a sanctuary state not just for immigration, but also for sexual-violence related issues. She added that although the University of California has committed to following the Obama-era Title IX standards, she thinks that other students in California may not experience the same protections.
Pan added she hopes the phone banking session will help her office be more accessible to students.
“I think that having consistent engagement with students is one of the most important things that the USAC office can do,” she said.
Mitansh Shah, a legislative advocate in the EVP office and second-year computer science and engineering student, said the phone lines were often busy when students tried to call the governor’s office during the first phone banking session.
“SB 169 was part of (University of California Student Association’s) advocacy campaign to coordinate advocacy efforts across all the UCs,” Shah said. “I believe that the governor’s office phones were overloaded because many UC students were making calls.”
Shah said that while he thinks it is difficult to encourage students to make calls, he said several students at Friday’s session were excited about the new initiative.
Alexis Doryumu, a second-year English student, says that she is interested in participating in the next phone banking session. She added she thinks the external vice president’s office should use the sessions to also target issues like food security on college campuses across California.
The phone banking sessions will be held regularly for the rest of fall quarter and winter quarter. Pan added the goal for each session is to make at least 50 calls, and her office will promote the program through social media.