Jones’ pilfering of Empowerment! infantile, harmful

The university, in theory, is supposed to provide a safe space
for personal growth and the exploration of various intellectual
ideas. Complementary to the education provided by learned academics
is the social knowledge attained through student-led political
endeavors and cultural expression.

A group of UCLA students, led in part by fourth-year political
science student Andrew Jones, have helped to destroy some of this
safe learning space.

Jones, formerly a Daily Bruin Viewpoint columnist, now head of
Bruin Republicans, registered Student Empowerment! as an official
student group this week ““ even though a well-known
undergraduate student government slate already uses that name.
Jones’ reasons for registering a group under the name Student
Empowerment! do not seem logically consistent with his history of
opposition to the student government slate. He feebly tried to
justify his actions by saying Student Empowerment! “was a
good-sounding name for a student group.” Jones also reasoned
that “it’s not stealing when (the name is) available to
register.”

It’s odd Jones considers Student Empowerment! a
“good sounding name” when he has repeatedly referred to
the slate as “Student Entrapment!” But coining
nicknames for the student government slate is only part of
Jones’ long-standing vendetta against Student Empowerment!
Not only does he avidly oppose the slate’s far-left political
ideology, he has repeatedly accused it of irresponsibly wasting
students’ money and ignoring issues deemed by many students
as more relevant and specific to UCLA. Jones’ aggression
revealed itself most candidly during the announcement of last
year’s student government elections when, while holding a
Students United for Reform and Equality sign, he engaged in a
pugnacious vocal interchange with Empowerment! candidates. Clearly,
Jones’ history negates his facetious naivete.

Jones and his minions have a right to express themselves
politically, too. But what they are doing is not political
expression; it’s completely disruptive. How ironic that Jones
believes the Empowerment! slate evades programming that is
beneficial to all students, but in stealing its identity, he gives
the group more to worry about in trying to retrieve that identity.
How ironic that Jones believes the Empowerment! slate has in the
past undercut the efforts of groups outside of its coalition when
he is now doing the exact same thing.

Groups can no longer focus on improving their programming or
recruiting students to join their communities; they now have to
fear that Jones or other students like him will beat them to the
Center for Student Programming and register their groups under
their own names before they do. Groups such as the African Student
Union, Samahang Pilipino and the Muslim Students Association, who
have to register with CSP annually, can lose their identities if a
Bruin Republican shows up five minutes earlier.

CSP’s procedure for registering student groups is so
technical it does not allow for the incorporation of intelligent
subjective judgment. The director of the CSP has even said the
adviser who registered Student Empowerment! for Jones probably knew
he was not part of the slate. But the procedures
“technically” allow Jones to register. Perhaps
there’s no solution that would stop this from happening again
since a student with enough desire to undermine another’s
efforts will always exist, but some change has to occur. The CSP
should consider reviewing its policy that requires groups to
re-register every year. This wouldn’t help Student
Empowerment!, since it is a slate not a group, but it might prevent
students with bad intentions from taking the names of other
established organizations. The CSP should also keep an eye on new
groups who register with names suspiciously similar to already
existing campus entities and make its complaint-filing procedure
public information upon registration.

It’s a shame ““ and perhaps a testament to their
substance ““ that Jones and other members of the Bruin
Republicans cannot counter Student Empowerment! with intelligent
debate rather than infantile tactics.

The more embarrassing aspect of this whole mess, though, is that
the solution on the CSP side is simple: rather than having advisers
mechanically fill out forms, let them use their brains.