The same lawn at UCLA where hundreds of students protested the fee hikes in November was the setting on Monday for the United States Student Association, the only nationwide campaigning group devoted to promoting student’s rights.
The association held a conference at UCLA for the last five days to elect a new president and vice president, and also to vote on a set of campaigns to work on for the upcoming year.
The presidential election was an easy win for Lindsay McCluskey, a recent graduate of University of Massachusetts-Amherst and the only person in the running for the position. McCluskey is looking to use the strong relationships the association has with legislators in Washington to pass the newly chosen campaigns.
“We were able to adopt a set of “¦ principles and I hope we’re able to move forward as unified as possible “¦ because our opponents are hoping that we won’t,” she said in a speech on Monday. “And we need to prove them wrong.”
The vice presidential space was contested between two candidates, with Victor Sanchez from UC Santa Cruz as the winner.
After seeing his three close friends drop out of college because of financial issues and after working on the DREAM Act for four years, Sanchez is looking forward to the upcoming year.
“I think, right now, you have this whole resurgence of energy to want these kinds of reforms,” he said. “But to not work on it is a loss we can’t afford.”
The campaigns focus on turning bills that would benefit students into federal laws. After a long Sunday of debating possible campaigns, student representatives from across the nation gathered in front of Covel Commons, hearing acceptance speeches from newly elected office members and chanting “Can’t stop, won’t stop!”
The association wants to promote the passage of the DREAM Act, which has more support from legislators this year than any other year before.
Undocumented students have avenues at UCLA to organize and find support networks, said Ernesto Zumaya, a UCLA representative at the conference and a fourth-year English student.
The DREAM Act campaign will be a chance for UCLA to show other campuses the significance of the issue, he said.
“It’s more of a UCLA component going national,” Zumaya said. “We’ve done rallies and protests (for undocumented students) “¦ it’s more to push other states to be just as active.”
The association is also planning a campaign for the Local Jobs for America Act, which would provide 750,000 new jobs over the next two years, including jobs for college graduates.
The funds for the bill would also go towards preventing furloughs and layoffs for faculty and staff at college campuses.
Fee hikes, furloughs and budget cuts brought labor unions and students together, since both stood to protest the UC Regents’ decision in November, said Chris Santos, external vice president for the Undergraduate Students Association Council and a member of UCLA’s delegation at the conference.
The bill calls on both parties to work together, something that UCLA could benefit from, he said.
“That means people power,” he said.
Since unions receive large amounts of funding and generally have more ties in Washington than students do, they may provide a helping hand for student organizations on campus, he added.
“They can then be more flexible, and as students with budget and funding constraints, we don’t have that,” Santos said.
USAC may also be able to bring this national campaign to UCLA by promoting worker appreciation on campus, he added.
Other countries have also taken an interest in the association’s upcoming campaign agenda.
Katherine Giroux-Bougard, a representative from the Canadian Federation of Students who attended the conference, said there are many parallels between the two organizations’ campaigning agendas.
The Canadian federation is looking at ways to increase funding for schools on a national level, she said.
Attending the conference for the past few days has given Giroux-Bigard a sense of the similar struggles that students face, regardless of country.
“I felt like I was at one of our own general meetings,” she said.
These concerns are issues that Sanchez has been working on for years. The timing this year might be just right for both bills to pass into law, he said.
“There is respect for an organization that is powerful enough to move things,” he said. “I definitely think our presence in D.C. is getting bigger.”