Submission: USAC EVP aims to use student power to cause, enforce change

I first came into this office with the promise of consolidating and leveraging student power to better our lives. I said that we must build a bridge with University of California President Janet Napolitano and the governor’s office. Many said it could not be done. I said that we must use our resources to directly engage with the U.S. Congress. Many said that, too, could not be done. Their dissent sent a message: Students are not powerful enough to professionally contend with the political forces that affect our world. Today, I want to send a different message: Students, who try, wield immense power.

It is not always appropriate or in our best interest to partner with university administration, but it is very often both. My office’s willingness to merely engage in adult conversations with the University have lent it invaluable contacts and resources. On more than one occasion we strategized with Napolitano and her senior staff on joint advocacy for state funding and federal aid. UCLA’s state government relations staff have been loyal partners in executing such advocacy on the ground level. The tuition freeze and other state level victories are partly attributable to these alliances. If you can imagine, none of this infrastructure was utilized before this year.

Indeed, on Nov. 23, we met with Richard Bloom, assemblyman from Santa Monica – whom I first met with help from state relations – who is enthusiastically helping us lay the strategic groundwork for legislation that will transform mental health services on California campuses, better funding for Counseling and Psychological Services and Campus Assault Resources and Education advocates and diversifying our corps of psychologists and counselors. Yet, we have made 80 official government visits since late May, and this is but a single exciting development of the many my staff and I have been working on this year.

We promised to take UCLA student advocacy to the federal government. So from Nov. 11 through Nov. 18, my staff and I made our second trip in the fall to Washington, D.C., where we took nearly 30 additional meetings, including some with Congress, the Department of Education, and the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. We also participated in the process of drafting the new Higher Education Act, the reviving of the Federal Perkins Loan Program and the defeat of the Safe Campus Act. HEA affects virtually every aspect of federal student aid, and we are closer to brokering a bipartisan compromise that will create additional student loan repayment assistance options. Perkins Loans were the only subsidized loans available to low income students, before it was blocked from reauthorization by a single U.S. senator, Lamar Alexander.

Now, thanks to pressure from advocates like us, the House of Representatives is very likely forcing a vote on Perkins by attaching it to the highway bill. Try to block that, Alexander.

The Safe Campus Act would restrict sexual assault survivors’ right to privacy, and force them to report to the police should they notify the university. The Senate committee dealing with education promised us that it is dead. These are important conversations, and decisions are made by those who show up. We have to be there, and we are. The results are clear.

If students do not believe the Undergraduate Students Association Council can better their lives, it is in part because USAC underestimates its ability to do so, too often reaching for the ceiling instead of the stars. My office launched the Bruin Defenders program, an initiative that permits students to take their issues directly to Washington, D.C., and Sacramento with the help of my staff at no cost, opening the chance to anyone at UCLA to break that ceiling and touch the stars.

As we begin to organize the first of these trips, build new partnerships and pass new laws, I cannot help but be in awe of the very real power of youth, and the very real possibility that we might change the world around us for the better.

Helder is the USAC External Vice President.