Starting this fall, Jason Gaulton will run an office of roughly
60 volunteers and staff members working to coordinate campus
events, and Justin Schreiber will head a commission that oversees
20 community service groups at UCLA.
Gaulton and Schreiber are running unopposed in this year’s
Undergraduate Students Association Council elections, and with a
single vote each the two candidates will become next year’s
campus events commissioner and community services commissioner.
A second-year philosophy student, Gaulton was hired by the
campus events commission as a freshman. Gaulton, who works booking
shows, said on-campus events have been good this year and next year
will be even better.
Increased publicity and advertising is something Gaulton plans
to concentrate on to ensure students know about events.
“I’m scared to death that people won’t show up
no matter how big the band is,” Gaulton said.
“Communications with forums that could get the word out is
extremely important.”
Ryan Wilson, current campus events commissioner, said because
advertising is so vital, next year’s volunteers and staffers
could benefit from training that would teach them about sensitive
issues like stereotypes in publicity. With training the commission
could get the word out about events in a non-offensive way, Wilson
said.
Gaulton added that he wanted to create a contract or some other
method of deterring studios from cancelling events. This
year’s movie program was excellent, Gaulton said, but many
studios cancelled.
“We’ve been missing out. Because we’re
students, they feel they can take advantage of us,” Gaulton
said.
Schreiber, a third-year neuroscience and history student, has
been on the community service commission for over two years. As
commissioner, he said he will work to strengthen the connection
between the commission and community service groups on campus that
do not work under it.
“We focus too much on groups that we have … We need to
reach out to the UCLA community … promote community service
already established on campus,” Schreiber said.
Calling community service an “important part of the UCLA
experience,” Schreiber said he wants to see more students
involved in service activities. Schreiber said he would like to see
students take advantage of the opportunity to use community service
as a channel to improve problems with education and health care
systems.
“For people in college, it’s great for building them
up for later experiences in life. … You don’t have the
opportunity and time when you’re out of college,”
Schreiber said.
Suzanne Yu, this year’s community services commissioner,
said community services is an important commission because it
coordinates over 80 community service groups.
Last year, six of 13 USAC positions were uncontested. Schreiber
and Gaulton are the only unopposed candidates running for positions
this year, and both are running as independents.
Schreiber said he chose not to run on a slate because he
didn’t want his own commission to be split.
“I think it’s really important that the commission
stays independent just because of how much it represents those 20
groups ““ it’s really important to represent all those
views,” Schreiber said.
Gaulton said that as an independent, he could answer first to
the student body and the commission ““ not to any slate.