Narrow USAC agenda doesn’t serve anyone

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The traditionally narrow Undergraduate Student Association
Council agenda was exemplified Tuesday by yet another rally for
affirmative action.

The rally, sponsored in part by USAC, focused on the necessity
for students to work for “access to education.” But
ironically, the rally itself represented one of the many hindrances
that have worked against the UC’s granting this access.

Last year’s council members successfully worked to repeal
SP-1 and SP-2 ““ the measures that banned the use of
affirmative action in the university admissions and hiring
processes. This was because the UC Regents, and their meetings,
were open to student ideas and accessible to protesters.

But the battle is more difficult now. It’s is going to
take a lot more than a handful of 100-person protests on a single
UC campus to overturn Proposition 209, the initiative that banned
affirmative action throughout California.

This doesn’t mean students are now politically impotent.
Just because affirmative action is illegal doesn’t mean that
other, more feasible and reasonable methods of increasing access to
education don’t exist. It’s unrealistic to think that
affirmative action will be restored any time soon, and for now, we
have no choice but to work around this obstacle.

In burning financial and organizational resources on a lost
cause, USAC and its members affiliated student groups are
perpetuating the lack of access to education.

There’s more to accessible education than getting admitted
into the university. The largest problems currently looming over
UCLA include the soaring price (and lowered availability) of
housing, as well as the imminent increase in student registration
fees.

Many students will find it difficult to access education if they
can’t afford to pay for it or to live close to the
university. Yet protests designed to counteract these more real,
more immediate threats are not being organized.

While affirmative action seeks to only make education accessible
to ethnic minorities, working to lower housing costs and to ensure
registration fees are not hiked makes education accessible to
everyone.

USAC should pay close attention to the comparatively low turnout
at Tuesday’s rally. The low numbers should speak loudly to
USAC that the majority of students they represent are sick of
single-issue politics and tired of student government ignoring
other issues that are more directly relevant to everyone.

Organizing protests is difficult, especially for students with
little resources and even less time. But at the same time, protest
is the most effective means of making the student body’s
concerns heard. More students are bound to support a protest that
includes access issues not specific to minorities ““ and
they’re likely to show up in larger numbers for a protest of
that nature if it’s organized. All they need is leadership
““ and USAC needs to provide it.

Unlike any other organizations on campus, USAC has the power and
legitimacy to shape student thought and to effect meaningful change
““ they need to exercise this ability.

Until USAC and its affiliated student groups learn that pursuing
a lost cause instead of focusing on making change that’s
possible, they ““ along with the state and the UC ““ will
continue being an obstacle to access to education.