Student-initiated fee increase proposal received enough signatures to go on spring ballot

Students collected enough signatures to place a student-initiated $9.93 quarterly fee increase proposal on the ballot for the spring elections, after the undergraduate student government rejected the proposal at a meeting last week.

The proposed fee increase would raise student fees by $9.93 per quarter – including summer sessions as one quarter – to collect at least $840,000 a year for on-campus programs about issues such as campus retention, access to education and campus climate.

Funds from the fee increase would go to 13 different sources, including the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Campus Resource Center, the Fitness Improvement Training Through Exercise and Diet program and the Community Programs Office, among other places, according to the initiative proposal.

Student leaders advocating for the initiative come from six different organizations: the Campus Retention Committee, the Student Initiated Access Committee, the American Indian Student Association, the Vietnamese Student Union, the Community Programs Office and the Pacific Islands’ Student Association.

Berky Nelson, an administrative representative for the Undergraduate Students Association Council, who has been on the council for more than 10 years, said this is the first time he can recall students gathering enough signatures to put an initiative on the ballot after the council turned it down.

Students presented the proposal to USAC last week, but a divided council voted it down after several USAC officers cited a lack of time to review the proposal and questioned whether the increase would benefit a majority of students.

The students behind the proposed referendum decided to turn it into an initiative and attempted to put it on the spring ballot on their own.

A referendum is put on the ballot by a two-thirds majority vote of USAC, whereas initiatives are put on the ballot by students using a petition, according to the USAC election code.

Backers of the fee increase changed the name of the proposal after the USAC meeting from the Bruin Wellness Referendum to the Bruin Diversity Referendum. The drafters of the proposal also decreased the fee from from $10 to $9.93.

To get the initiative onto the ballot, the backers of the proposal needed to collect signatures from 10 percent of the undergraduate population registered this quarter – an estimated 2,700 signatures, said Debra Geller, a USAC administrative representative.

As of press deadline, supporters of the initiative had collected 3,400 signatures, said Molly Katz, a fourth-year history student who is the internal chair of the Community Programs Office Student Association and supports the proposal.

The students used different strategies to garner the required number of signatures. Volunteers contacted people by email and text messages and approached them at the gym, the dining hall and in Ackerman Union, said Lila Reyes, a second-year political science student and the volunteer coordinator for the initiative.

The backers of the initiative and several volunteers collected as many as 1,000 signatures in one night, said Brittany Bolden, a fourth-year sociology student, retention coordinator for the Afrikan Student Union and vice-chair for the Campus Retention Committee. Bolden is also a former Daily Bruin video contributor.

Katz said the drafters of the initiative and volunteers would continue collecting signatures until 10 p.m. Tuesday evening.

Backers of the initiative will hold a rally to announce the final count of signatures and hand them over to the USAC Election Board today, she said.

The rally will take place today at noon at Meyerhoff Park in front of Kerckhoff Hall.

Email Levin at [email protected].