Aram Ghoogasian: Students should not allow USAC slate politics to influence vote

The two largest slates in the undergraduate student government elections seem to live in glass houses.

Yet again, a scandal has hit the Undergraduate Students Association Council. This time, LET’S ACT! is in the hot seat.

A series of documents was leaked on Facebook Monday alleging that members of the slate illegally spent student fees and sold marijuana and alcohol to fund its campaign over the past two election cycles.

LET’S ACT! has denied any wrongdoing, despite External Vice President Conrad Contreras verifying the authenticity of some of the documents. However, the explanation posted on the LET’S ACT! Facebook page shortly after the documents were leaked, which includes a vague funding breakdown for this year’s campaign, does not succeed in quelling all doubts about the integrity of the slate.

The release of these documents should serve as a wake-up call. This latest scandal is just another in a long line of accusations of impropriety that have plagued both major slates in the past year.

Time and again, slates have proven to be harmful institutions to student government. Their existence is unfortunately unavoidable after such a long history of divided politics at UCLA, but voters, at the very least, have a say in the importance of slates at the polls. Although slate lines often inform the way students learn about student government, we should not allow them to dictate the way we vote.

Students should approach their votes over the next few days with slates completely out of their minds. Instead, we should all be considering each candidate’s individual platforms, performance at debates and performance in previous roles at UCLA. Candidates’ affiliation with a slate should strike voters as a dark mark on their candidacy, not a positive characteristic.

Some of the leaked documents reflect real events that have shown a mindless adherence to slate politics by councilmembers.

According to one of the documents, Transfer Student Representative Negeen Sadeghi-Movahed, Baral’s opponent in last year’s internal vice presidential race, suggested that the slate should wait “until Avinoam (said) something problematic” to try to impeach him after deciding that a special election was out of the question.

Several councilmembers opposed Baral’s assumption of the role of president without any credible arguments at a meeting this year, a move that was interpreted by many students as acutely political in nature. The documents, unfortunately, reflect the political motivations behind their complaints.

In response to the leak, LET’S ACT! released a list of donors and the amounts they donated. Unfortunately for them, putting a name next to a dollar amount doesn’t make the money seem any less dirty. A candidate could have well obtained their contribution amount via, for example, selling alcohol or marijuana at a funding party. If the allegations are untrue, as LET’S ACT! has asserted, it’ll need to show more evidence to substantiate its claim.

But lest we forget in the midst of the LET’S ACT! scandal, Bruins United has faced its own scandal earlier this year. The Daily Californian reported that Adam Milstein, a pro-Israel, Islamophobic donor, was funneling money into its campaign to influence the outcome of the vote on the resolution to divest from companies that do business in the occupied Palestinian territories. Both slates deserve harsh criticism for their conduct during campaigning, but neither has the right to criticize the other.

Sadly, the same point needs to be made time and time again: Candidates from both Bruins United and LET’S ACT! need to grow up and get their acts together.

USAC handles about $4 million in student fees per year, and this responsibility needs to be handled with maturity and care. Irresponsibility during campaigning can often bleed over into irresponsibility while holding office.

Not only does this behavior alienate a portion of the already minuscule group of students that care about USAC, but it’s also downright embarrassing.

Continuing this trend can lead to the collapse of our student government, and it needs to be reversed immediately. Luckily, reversing the importance of slate politics is in the hands of voters in this year’s elections – it’s on us to recognize the harmful nature of slates and to vote without letting propaganda from either side influence our decision.