Balance of votes will be more effective
It was almost exactly two years ago that I stood before the UC Board of Regents, discussing how the quality of education was going down and yet the fees were going up.
As I spoke, I glanced around the room to see who was listening to me. I was surprised when I discovered that most of the people there, except for the student regent and two other individuals, were not paying attention. The rest of the regents and administrators could not give me the same respect that I displayed toward them in the meeting.
I do want to add here that I teach public speaking to undergraduates now, and I stress a very significant point to my students which I want to stress to the regents. Your voices do not deserve to be heard if you do not show other speakers the respect they deserve when they stand up and speak.
The regents have an obligation to listen, yet, as anyone who attends a regents’ meeting can tell you, the regents never listen.
For years, I have seen student activism fail, time and time again, because the students were never able to speak and act from positions of power.
The solution to this problem, as the Daily Bruin so beautifully articulates in the Nov. 19 editorial, “Students deserve more than one voice on Board of Regents,” is that students need to have more than one voice on the Board of Regents.
I want to take this message one step further. I propose that we mobilize and create a proposition that enables students and faculty to gain more equal representation on the Board of Regents. I believe that the students, faculty and regents should all have an equal number of votes.
This endeavor will take a lot of hard work, and the results will not be immediate, but there is one definite impact that will happen as a result of pushing this proposition forward. If the regents choose not to listen to us, it will not matter; our votes will speak louder than their insolence.
Zakir Khan
Class of ’08, Political Science