Editorial: Students deserve a say in decisions, response from UC Regents

Much of the anger around the recent University of California Board of Regents’ vote to approve potential tuition increases stems from concerns that the governors of the University consistently fail to heed and consider the needs and wants of the students they are meant to serve.

Students do not have access to meaningful ways of participating in the decision-making of the UC. Only a single student sits as a voting member of the board, and despite administrators’ efforts to consult or collaborate with other student representatives, student voices are often loud but ultimately ignored.

While the UC president and other administrators frequently meet with students to discuss a variety of student issues, the practice serves as little more than good public relations if it does little to actually empower students to change how their university is run.

On Tuesday, the Undergraduate Students Association Council passed a resolution that calls on the UC to divest from American companies that some say profit from human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza.

Despite similar resolutions being passed by six out of the nine UC undergraduate student governments, the regents have been reluctant to change investment policies. To justify that, they often point to the University policy which states the UC will only divest from foreign countries if the U.S. government declares that they are committing acts of genocide, shutting down the discussion before it even begins.

Students have also called for UC divestment from fossil fuels, and while President Janet Napolitano announced the creation of a fossil fuel divestment task force, students are wary at the creation of a working group without a more substantial sway in the final decisions.

If students articulate their concerns and advocate on behalf of their needs, they deserve a real, substantive response from the University. Including a discussion item on investment policies at the next board meeting is a good faith effort to changing that perception.

For most of its history, the UC has kept tuition low, enabled by the high level of state support it received. But the situation has become altogether different in recent years. Faced with budgetary woes during the 2008 recession, the state drastically cut its funding for the University, and students now provide more for the state’s university system than the state itself.

In other words, the burden of paying for the UC has shifted from the state and taxpayers onto students and their families, a trend that is unlikely to be reversed.

Given that students are shouldering more and more of the responsibility for funding the UC and their education, governance of the University should be shared, grounded in the principles of accountability and partnership. Students should be able to hold the regents accountable for decisions that affect their University.