Submission: New representative’s priority should be creating transfer center

Being a transfer student at UCLA has never been easy, and although transfers make up one-third of the undergraduate population on campus, they have never been properly represented.

There has never been a member of USAC who has completely understood the issues and concerns of transfer students. There has been no student government officer to help fight stereotypes held by many on campus such as the notion that transfer students are academically weaker than traditional students. There are no councilmembers working toward securing more funding for transfer success programs.

However, during my time at UCLA, I have witnessed a shift in transfer student awareness. People are beginning to recognize the value of the transfer student community. This has been evident in the overwhelming number of votes by the student population last school year to create a transfer student representative in USAC. The stigma associated with transfer students is slowly starting to fade, as traditional students are beginning to understand the unique life experiences many transfer students bring to UCLA.

The new transfer student representative will not have an easy task. They are already at a disadvantage by having a shorter term than the other USAC members, and many of the needs of transfer students cannot be completed in one single year.

But the main goal of the transfer student representative should be to create a transfer student center. All the transfer resources on campus are scattered throughout various departments, like the Bruin Resource Center and the Academic Advancement Program, and can be hard to navigate. As a result, many students miss the chance to use resources designed to benefit their education. Resources should be consolidated to one location, so that every transfer student can easily access all the tools available to them.

Campuses like UC Berkeley and UC Irvine have transfer resource centers to serve their large populations of transfer students, veterans and re-entry students, showing each campus’s commitment to helping such students.

How can UCLA say it is as devoted to its transfer students as it is to its traditional students when it doesn’t provide such tools? With a center in place, UCLA will meet one of the recommendations of the 2014 University of California Office of the President Transfer Action Team Report. The report outlines ways in which the UCs can improve the transfer process for students coming to the UC.

The transfer student representative can also greatly help the transfer community by getting more funding for transfer-specific programs and continuing to build a transfer-receptive culture. Additional funding could help expand certain programs like the New Student Orientation, where transfer students only have one day of orientation while incoming freshmen are allotted three days.

Transfer-specific funding could also be used to design more workshops that help students adapt to life as a Bruin. Over the years, many new students have developed the so-called “transfer shock,” where incoming transfers see a drop in their GPA during their first quarter at UCLA. Funding for transfer students should be used effectively to help reduce the factors that make the transition to UCLA difficult.

While the transfer representative position brings excitement to the transfer community, it can also create reason for deep concern. As a transfer myself, I hope this position will remain free from the campus politics that have plagued USAC and divided various communities over the past couple of years.

The transfer student representative was created to be all-inclusive and represent all the transfer students who have never had a voice at the council table, not to advocate the personal politics of certain individuals or parties. Whoever wins the election has the duty to keep personal politics at bay. If they fail at that aspect, then they nullify the true intention of creating this proposition in the first place. The individual will lose the support of the entire transfer community, making the representative no longer fit for office.

Overall, now is an amazing time to be a transfer student at UCLA. There is an excitement in the air in the transfer community from the creation of the only voting transfer student representative currently on any UC student government board. The newly elected member will have the opportunity to work with and encourage both USAC and the administration to make UCLA a more accommodating environment for the currently unrepresented one-third of the student population on campus.

Kramer is a fourth-year history student and the chair of both the College of the Canyons to UCLA Network and the Non-Traditional Students Network.