Dahle has right perspective for president

David Dahle

The office of USAC president requires a candidate with a
cooperative spirit ““ someone who can orient the council to
focus on practical student issues affecting the campus at large.
Student Empowerment! candidate Bryant Tan has proven himself unable
to do this during his tenure as academic affairs commissioner, and
the prospects of him changing his ways are doubtful. Though his
slate-mates’ viability is shaky, SURE candidate David Dahle
is the best choice for president.

Tan and Dahle overlap on their positions for many issues,
especially those pertaining to academics, quality of life, and
underrepresented communities at UCLA. The difference is that
Dahle’s approach is more productive than Tan’s.

As a general representative for SURE this year, Dahle
continually faced opposition in the form of bloc voting by Student
Empowerment!, which has the majority. This has made him realize
more than anyone the negative by-product of partisanship, leading
him to commit himself to representing all students.

Dahle admits that he has not reached out to ethnic- and
identity-based student advocacy groups. But his reason for it is
understandable: these groups are already strongly represented by
council members affiliated with Student Empowerment!, so he wants
to expand the council’s breadth of inclusion.

Current Student Empowerment! candidates have failed to reach out
to groups who are not traditionally considered “advocacy
groups” but who nonetheless develop programming and represent
diverse communities. These include the Indian Student Union,
Disabled Student Union and Greek Life. In fact, the only
significant interaction Tan had with DSU was in his maneuvering to
deny it funding.

Not only does Tan have a horrible outreach record with these
groups, his unsubtle connections to the student groups he does
belong to bias his priorities. Tan is not willing to pay for
helping develop Disabled Student Union advocacy, but he is willing
to spend hundreds of dollars to buy Daily Bruin advertisements for
the Concerned Asian-Pacific Islander Students for Action and to
host hip-hop artists under the guise of their
“academic” value. This is troublesome for someone who
sat on the Budget Review Committee this year.

As president, Dahle would complement the representation student
advocacy groups will receive with Student Empowerment! candidates,
by bringing in the viewpoint of overlooked campus organizations.
This, in turn, will help increase the council’s campus
visibility and student-friendliness ““ something sorely
lacking this year. Dahle’s ideas on increasing surveys and
polling may not be as effective as he thinks, but at least it shows
the campus he’s trying to understand their perspective. Tan,
on the other hand, wants more townhall meetings.

The disparity is revealing: Dahle will attempt to engage as many
students as possible; Tan will wait for them to come to him.
Dahle’s proactive disposition, strong leadership style and
cooperative nature is important considering he and Tan agree on
most issues.

Both candidates support a diversity requirement. Dahle said he
disagrees with Dria Fearn ““ his slate-mate running for
academic affairs commissioner ““ that the diversity
requirement should extend to other areas such as age and
disability; he believes it should focus only on issues of
ethnicity, identity and the social repression thereof.

Like Tan, Dahle also believes the USAC president has a
responsibility to lead student advocacy on issues relevant to
underrepresented communities; he promised to bring these to the
USAC table with Student Empowerment!

Dahle’s knowledge about quality of life issues (housing,
parking, overcrowding) and academic issues (reuniting classes,
semester vs. quarter system, minimum progress requirements) is
impressive. And though Tan also has a strong understanding of
academic issues, he’s done little about it. Last year he
declared the diversity requirement as one of his top priorities; we
don’t have it yet. All he’s done is organize
small-scale presentations relevant to it, but largely ineffective.
He didn’t ensure all student representative positions in the
Academic Senate this year were filled. He was vocal on
comprehensive review, but no one really opposed it at UCLA.

Since Dahle and Tan share many of the same ideas, the key factor
for students to remember is results. Dahle did his job as general
representative this year to move USAC to adopt a more
representative philosophy and to increase student participation
through lobbying for online voting. Tan had a more defined job as
academic affairs commissioner, but he did nothing meaningful this
year. Student Empowerment! controlled USAC this year, and thus had
the opportunity to change its exclusive tendencies ““ its
shortcomings reflect on all of its members, including Tan.

It’s time for a change, and the only rational choice is to
go with the candidate who hasn’t already proven himself a
failure. Vote for Dahle.