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Editorial: USAC resolution would harm relationship with UC Office of the President

By Editorial Board

Sept. 30, 2013 1:33 a.m.

A resolution on the table at the Undergraduate Students Association Council this week addressing incoming University of California President Janet Napolitano would cripple the chance for constructive dialogue with the incoming executive.

The council must vote down this highly politicized resolution in order to honor its role as a representative body and to allow for a fruitful relationship between UCLA and the UC Office of the President.

The resolution, penned by External Vice President Maryssa Hall, Student Wellness Commissioner Savannah Badalich, General Representative Lizzy Naameh and Cultural Affairs Commissioner Jessica Trumble, faults Napolitano for failing to meet with students before she has even started in her new position and drums up exaggerated concerns that Napolitano’s presence will endanger the undocumented and immigrant communities at UCLA.

This board agrees that the UC president selection process lacked transparency and that Napolitano’s inexperience in academia are both cause for skepticism. However, this resolution would hold Napolitano culpable for issues outside her reach as UC president.

Replete with combative language and overblown arguments, the six-page resolution touches on issues from deportations to prison reform.

Just as concerning is the misleading title “A Bill in Support of Undocumented Students and Immigrant Communities,” which ties the conversation of Napolitano’s appointment solely to the rights of undocumented students, as if one could not support both simultaneously.

The detrimental effect of deportations of undocumented individuals is cause for great concern, but does not justify the eagerness of the resolution’s authors to pin their frustrations with national policies on Napolitano, who has been a vocal supporter of DREAMers and comprehensive immigration reform.

The resolution asks the council to pass a vote of no confidence in Napolitano’s “ability to actualize the mission of the University of California Office of the President” until she completes a list of “demands.”

These demands include vague requests that campus police and staff be trained in the rights of and issues involving undocumented students, the prohibition of riot police from interfering with campus protests and the stipulation that UC funds may not be put toward information gathering or arrests of undocumented individuals.

All this points to a misunderstanding by the resolution’s authors of the jurisdiction of state and federal governments and the power available to the University presidents as compared to members of the cabinet of the president of the United States.

As the head of the Department of Homeland Security, Napolitano oversaw the implementation of programs mandated by the United States Congress. That included the controversial Secure Communities program responsible for the deportations of tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants.

In the top spot at the University, Napolitano no more retains the ability to deport an individual than to open a UC campus in Nevada.

The proposed resolution amounts to a handful of undergraduate students shaking their fists at the moon. Substantive institutional progress does not stem from confrontation and toothless threats – these actions only push the undergraduate government toward the fringe.

USAC stands as the representative of UCLA’s undergraduate population and must come to understand that progressive and substantive change within the UC will come from cooperation and clear-minded dialogue, not saber-rattling and empty threats.

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