UC Board of Regents needs to be more involved on school campuses

On Monday, UC Board of Regents member Jesse Cheng appeared in Royce Hall for a town hall meeting. It was a rare moment of connection between the regents and the student community, except that Cheng himself is a student.

Dialogue of this kind is a welcome move, but Cheng’s visit should only be a first step toward greater communication between the board and the thousands of students the University of California educates.

Cheng already understands our lives and concerns; the student regent, by definition, is aware of student issues. When he returns to his fellow board members, he will presumably report that most people attending UCLA feel many of the same things he already does.

The non-student regents should follow Cheng’s lead and immerse themselves more deeply and more often in the communities they serve. They need to breathe the same air as us, or at least hear us tell them about our air.

Alfredo Mireles Jr., the student regent-designate, suggested on Monday that there should be one undergraduate and one graduate student on the board. It was an insightful suggestion; the vast student population of the UC campuses is in no way homogeneous, and the division between undergraduates and graduates is a clear one that should be represented.

The regents clearly understand that the bureaucratic side of the university system requires more than one representative. They do, after all, have 18 board members. With a university system as large as the UC, it extends that the student body, a much larger group and theoretically the reason the UC exists, deserves a multiplicity of votes.

These universities pride themselves on the diversity of their students, yet they expect that their needs can be represented by one person.

Along these lines, the non-student regents must make a much greater effort to seek out student voices.

No matter how much they study the projected effects of their actions on paper, the regents cannot fully appreciate the consequences of fee hikes and layoffs unless they hear about them directly from the students. The student regent gives a face and a constant presence to their grievances.

Cheng already understands how these circumstances are changing his own college experience, but his visit to UCLA no doubt reminded him that his fellow students rely on him to communicate their many individual concerns to the rest of the board.

Cheng would do well to remind the other regents that it is their job and their duty to familiarize themselves with those concerns. It is too much pressure for one person to speak on behalf of every UC student, and too little power on a board that should ultimately serve those students.