Most people at UCLA understand that the Undergraduate Students Association Council is supposed to represent all undergraduate students, taking direction and leadership from students themselves. Ideally, it’s a representative government: we all pay $160 annually in fees, and every Spring we elect 14 councilmembers to promote student welfare. But this week’s proposal to limit the types of resolutions USAC can pass represents the complete opposite of this principle of representative government.
As a legislative body, USAC acts as a sounding board for student concerns. The USAC website states that “a resolution is a formal and official expression of opinion or stance on an issue … which represents the holistic view of the undergraduate student body at the University of California, Los Angeles.”
Instead of finding innovative ways to tackle their undergraduate constituents’ concerns, some councilmembers want to limit the degree to which they’re responsible for representing students. The proposed bylaw changes state that, one, the only resolutions this and future councils can consider are ones fitting a vague definition of “student welfare,” and, two, every resolution passed by a council applies only to that council, that year.
Although the authors of this bylaw change include vague criteria such as education, health, resources, safety, and rights as matters of “student welfare”, it’s clear that the proposal is not actually in the interest of students. Rather, it gives 14 councilmembers the power to interpret the phrase “student welfare” as narrowly as they want. The author of the proposal never surveyed students or student groups to hear their definition of student welfare, or what they wanted their representatives to pass resolutions on. Nor did the author explain, when asked by the Daily Bruin, what examples of past resolutions would be included or excluded from this criteria. Under the proposed bylaws, we don’t know if council would be able to pass a resolution in solidarity with student protests at the University of Missouri, even if vast numbers of students on campus wanted their representatives to do just that. And of course, the application of these definitions will likely be determined through arguments between council members with differing ideologies and agendas, or ultimately through cases filed with the Judicial Board. None of this is a recipe for effective and representative student government.
USAC cannot see into the future and ensure that its vague definition of student welfare will actually suffice to meet the needs of future councils tackling unforeseen issues. They should not tie the hands of future students – who they do not represent – and future council members – who would serve a campus environment different from the one we face today. Rather than restrict the degree to which future councils can represent their constituents, council should preserve maximum flexibility to fulfill its role as representatives of students, in the ways that students themselves want to be represented.
Many of the same arguments apply to the proposal to state that past resolutions do not apply to current councils. Any given year, USAC council may not unanimously agree with all of the resolutions passed by its predecessors. But that does not give any council permission to disavow decades of student activism and legislation, and invalidate the work that these resolutions represent. More importantly, many past bills commit USAC to action. The 2013 “Drop the I-Word” resolution, for example, worked to reduce use of the derogatory term “illegal” to describe undocumented immigrants. USAC now refrains from using the term in official language, and ensures that it be used less often elsewhere. Disavowing all prior resolutions hurts USAC’s credibility on this and many other issues.
Apparently, certain council members don’t want to do the work of writing and passing resolutions, nor be bound by earlier legislation that they may not agree with. It’s perfectly fine for them to state their disapproval of past resolutions during their term of office. But it’s incredibly hypocritical to say on one hand that you don’t want to be bound by past resolutions, while on the other hand, binding all future councils to your own arbitrary definition of student welfare.
This council was elected to represent the 2015-2016 student body, not to prejudge how future councils should represent future student bodies yet to come, and certainly not to invalidate official resolutions they might happen to disagree with. The welfare of students today and tomorrow is best served by USAC voting down these proposals.
Casasola is a third-year statistics student and external vice president of Samahang Pilipino. Rana is a fourth-year economics student and multicultural engagement director of general representative 2. Cortez is a fourth-year political science student. All three ran for USAC positions last spring with the LET’S ACT! slate.