Aram Ghoogasian: Slates must enforce inclusiveness of open application process

It’s one thing to say a process is inclusive. It’s another to make it so.

The latter is going be the difficult part for the Undergraduate Students Association Council as May elections approach.

The two most prominent UCLA undergraduate student government slates, Bruins United and LET’S ACT!, recently released applications for those looking to run for student government positions.

While the idea is good in theory, the slates need to make sure it succeeds in practice.

Both Bruins United and LET’S ACT! have a tendency to run in-house candidates. USAC President Avinoam Baral won the internal vice president position the year after he served as the chief of staff for his predecessor Internal Vice President Avi Oved, former USAC President Devin Murphy was his predecessor’s chief of staff and External Vice President Conrad Contreras was a prominent member of his predecessor’s staff as well.

It’s entirely possible that these three people were the most qualified for their positions and should have been picked over all other potential candidates. But picking candidates from inside the office contributes to the often destructive tendency of the slated candidates to submit to the ideology of the group, preventing the growth of new ideas and perspectives.

Having an open application gives the selection process the appearance of democracy, but if current councilmembers automatically handpick their successors regardless, the applications can merely be used as a front for a system of slate nepotism, wherein councilmembers select their friends or the most obvious and involved members of the slate to succeed them.

Ideally, current USAC members shouldn’t be involved in the selection process to avoid biased in-house selection. Slate chairs, campaign managers and members of different office staffs, however, can check each other’s biases.

This isn’t to say that in-house candidates shouldn’t run; oftentimes they are the strongest candidates because of their experience working with the very office they look to assume. But sometimes more qualified candidates, perhaps from other offices, or transfer students, can provide additional insight. Experience working in the office that candidates hope to assume isn’t the only type of experience that should be valued.

This is especially relevant for LET’S ACT!, since students can apply to any of their 14 seats this year.

However, Bruins United is only holding open applications for the general representative and transfer representative positions.

This restriction pushes applicants toward a limited number of seats, giving reviewers free rein to choose whoever they want without an open application. If USAC members are selected to run for the offices they’ve worked in for a year or more under their predecessors’ tutelage, they could wind up becoming near carbon copies of their mentors.

Councilmembers from both slates share their predecessors’ unwillingness to work with the opposing slate. An open application can give people that are less hard-lined on slate politics an opportunity to run and change the dominant culture.

If this application process is implemented properly, USAC candidates will no longer be groomed for an election from the beginning of the year because of some clandestine line of succession. They will instead be compared with other applicants who may not have as much USAC experience and, based on how they stack up with the competition, may be selected to run in May.

Whoever reviews the applications needs to take experience such as community college engagement or student group leadership – none of which is necessarily directly related to USAC – seriously to ensure that the process is inclusive.

Setting up an open application process can strengthen student government democracy and allow for students to take advantage of the resources slates can provide, including the increased exposure that USAC outsiders often have trouble getting.

Bruins United and LET’S ACT! have a chance to bring real, lasting change to USAC that won’t divide the council along party lines. If they take it seriously and abandon nepotism altogether, the open application could radically change the way student government operates at UCLA for the better.