Although he has garnered most of his experience outside of the Undergraduate Students Association Council, Gabe Rose shows great promise and skill as a leader. His platform is set to move the council in a direction which some critics find lacking in the current council ““ inclusion of all students.
The Bruins United candidate’s ideas shift away from specific advocacy efforts and move toward looking at the university community as a whole.
His experience outside of USAC proves he can handle the difficulties of leading the council without ever having sat at the table before.
During his freshman year, Rose started the Student Coalition for Marriage Equality, and since the group’s inception two years ago, it has hosted two same-sex wedding ceremonies in Bruin Plaza ““ demonstrating initiative and the ever-important ability to follow through with goals.
Additionally, his involvement with the Bruin Democrats has exposed him to a large network of contacts, leaving him able to network with the many more he would meet in the president’s office.
But Rose’s USAC experience should not be ignored. Rose has spent this year working under current USAC President Marwa Kaisey. Putting time in her office has allowed him to learn about the ins and outs of USAC.
Rose’s Concerts for Cash plan has an enormous goal: getting big-name artists to perform on campus and generating enough ticket revenue to redistribute to student groups and programs.
Ambitious? Yes. Unfeasible? No, but we have some concerns.
The plan calls for Pauley Pavilion as the primary venue. Rose may need to think about some of the smaller and less impossible-to-book places on campus to host the ticketed concerts.
But his mentality seems to allow for adaptability and compromise. Pauley is the ultimate goal, but if it’s unattainable, any other venue that can still generate revenue for students that wasn’t there before is good enough.
The program will take a lot of student leaders’ time and effort, but we believe Rose has the prudence to realize the program’s shortcomings and the capability to work with them.
His proposed We Matter 2008 program to bring presidential candidates to campus shows great promise and widespread appeal.
As the current president of the Bruin Democrats, he has already established contacts in that sphere and can attract big political names.
He will also work to get Republican candidates to campus, to ensure both major parties get the opportunity to spread their message to UCLA students.
Rose’s plan for increasing overall visibility and transparency on council is also much needed and quite welcome. Teaming greater transparency with good marketing strategies to let everyone see what USAC is up to should decrease the council’s perceived unimportance on campus.
Rose plans to start off on the right foot with the new chancellor arriving next year, cultivating a solid working relationship to ensure that student issues aren’t saved for the student office hours.
Rose understands the importance of the president’s interaction with the chancellor, and we trust he can effectively and accurately communicate student concerns to Incoming Chancellor Gene Block.
We predict Rose’s chief opponent to be Students First! candidate Gregory Cendana. As current internal vice president, Cendana has accumulated a great amount of council-based experience. However, we were not impressed with his campaign goals, because they concern smaller cross-sections of the campus population and seem important to fewer students than those of Rose.
Specifically, Cendana has proposed drawing up a UC Student Bill of Rights to assert what rights students have in the face of university administrators, from professors to the UC Office of the President.
But we fail to see the point. For any such document to carry weight, the administration would have to be 100 percent behind it, which is far from likely. Such a bill would never be binding, so why bother?
Cendana’s plan to increase accessibility to the chancellor is not as promising as Rose’s. Dinners, luncheons and conferences won’t be as helpful to students as having one truly solid point of contact with the chancellor.
We appreciated Cendana’s ideas to improve sexual health services ““ a great portion of campus is affected by issues related to sexual health. However, the specifics of his plan do not appear easily feasible. He asks for a lot in terms of money and logistics, and we’re not sure how much he’ll get.
Independent candidates David Valk and Jose Manaiza failed to impress us. They brought a fiery enthusiasm to the table, but forgot to bring along a working understanding of the ways of the council ““ neither has ever been to a council meeting.
Valk proposed several good ideas, but he is too caught up in trying to abolish slate politics to understand the means to implement them. We think his Safe Rides program can and should be implemented, but Valk need not be on council for that to happen.
Manaiza demonstrated a similar lack of research into USAC processes. Though he has an unquestionable passion about being a Bruin, he doesn’t realize what makes the undergraduate council work and what its limitations are.