It’s the last day of elections: Where do you stand?

Wednesday, May 1, 1996

Students should reform government by ignoring slates, voting
randomly

By Mike Bourdaa

Every year we are subjected to big, ugly campaign signs (as if
the green construction fences aren’t enough) and sandwich-boarders
trying to shove pins and flyers into our hands, and every year,
approximately 80 percent of us choose to try our best to ignore it
all and not vote.

The remaining 20 percent of us are mostly the people who are in
the sandwich boards to begin with … and so the cycle continues as
that 20 percent elects itself back into power again and again.

Every year that I’ve been here, I’ve seen it again and again.
Again, the pseudo two-party system at UCLA, where everyone is
either a Greek or a militant (as if it were impossible to be both
or neither), both sides are predictably endorsed by their
traditional allies, and nothing ever changes. Sure, we have new
faces every year ­ perhaps even the "opposition party" wins,
and the two trade places ­ but every year at this time, we
realize that the Undergraduate Student Association Council (USAC)
doesn’t do diddly for the 80 percent of us.

Did you know that you pay $54 every year, and that the people
elected this week get to do basically whatever they want with that
money? Did you know that this year, 50 percent of the funds
allocated by the Undergraduate Students Association Council to
USAC-sponsored groups went to only FOUR special interest groups?
(Is it not ironic that those four groups are ALWAYS 100 percent in
support of the current "in-power" slate?).

"Students First!" ­ did you ever ask WHICH students were
first? I’d say it’s those four groups that get the 50 percent of
the cash. "United Students" ­ perhaps, but it sure doesn’t
sound very united when 80 percent of the campus doesn’t even seem
to care.

What do WE get out of USAC? Well, we get our collective
rear-ends kissed (who does the kissing is dependent on the color of
our skin: No one propagates racism on this campus better than the
people running for office), and we get told all about all these
"great things" that they are going to do … and it never gets
done. USAC doesn’t serve us; it serves the groups that endorsed it,
the groups that always have endorsed it.

This year, unfortunately, shall be no exception, and it is time
for the 80 percent of us to rise up and do something about it
together.

I was going to suggest a mass protest, where everyone turns in a
totally blank ballot, but "Our Student Government" doesn’t even
allow this. There is NO provision for a "None of the Above" option
on our ballots. THIS must change.

So THIS election, I encourage all of you to vote … even if you
don’t give a damn about USAC. Ignore endorsements. Ignore slates.
Ignore cute advertising logos and signs. But even if you don’t know
Students First! from the Tidy Bowl Man, or United Students from a
hole in the head, you must vote.

How to vote? Try these methods: Vote randomly. Vote for yourself
with write-ins. Vote for me (but please, not too many, because I
don’t want to WIN). Vote for some dork in your class who sleeps
through every lecture. Vote for some dude walking around campus
naked (oops, sorry, that’s Berkeley). It doesn’t matter. A large
protest vote of this kind, alone, may pressure our elected
representatives to START REPRESENTING us.

And, if it doesn’t, we the students must see to it that there is
an amendment to the USAC constitution that will provide for a
mandatory "None of the Above" option. Having the opportunity to say
"NO" to EVERYONE running, and refusing to choose the lesser of two
evils, is the ONLY way we will ever get either slate to TRULY
listen to the concerns of the students. Reform of our corrupted and
nonfunctioning student government is long overdue.

Bourdaa is a fourth-year biochemistry student.