Endorsement: Kaczmarek best EVP choice

The contest for the Undergraduate Students Association
Council’s external vice president should be no contest at all
““ Matt Kaczmarek is the clear choice.

Kaczmarek’s experience lobbying the outside powers that be
on behalf of UCLA students is unmatched. He served this year as
chief-of-staff to current EVP Chris Neal, as campus organizing
director for University of California Student Association and as
regional vice-chair for the United States Student Association.

His qualifications dwarf his opponent’s.

Kaczmarek, running on the Students First! slate, has a keen
understanding that current student fee hikes are symptoms of a
larger problem: the acceptance by government and university
officials that a state’s budget problem can be passed on to
its public school students and their families.

Kaczmarek speaks of the need to combat the philosophy behind the
fee hikes, not just the hikes themselves. He says he will lobby
officials in Sacramento and Oakland to abandon their notion of
student fees as a contribution to a machine that takes millions of
dollars to operate. Rather, Kaczmarek says, officials need to
return to the way the UC’s original architects’
thought: that subsidized education is a public investment, to which
all young people should have access.

It is through past experience that Kaczmarek has adopted such
in-depth understanding of the student fee issue ““ the
most important issue for next year’s EVP, and perhaps all of
council. It is also through his experience that he ““ if
anyone ““ will be able to actually do something about the
problem.

What is most impressive about Kaczmarek’s election bid is
that he is not resting on his laurels. He is critical, at times, of
both the current EVP and the lobbing methods he and his colleagues
used last year in failed attempts to keep fees from increasing.

Kaczmarek says student leaders should mobilize students by
showing that while education endures cuts, the state continues to
fund the state’s prisons at high levels. He adds, though,
when it comes to state and university officials, lobbying should
focus on why education is important ““ not on why it is more
important than areas of those officials are responsible to fund. He
will take an informed and nuanced approach in lobbying and in
training other lobbyists.

David Rodriguez, running for the office on the Students United
for Reform and Equality slate, has neither the experience nor the
understanding necessary to run one of USAC’s most important
offices. He has no experience with either UCSA or USSA. It
shows.

Rodriguez said he would lobby for the Racial Privacy Initiative
if he thought a majority of UCLA students supported it, even though
Kaczmarek and hundreds of other student lobbyists spent the year
establishing their opposition to the dangerous initiative. Such an
attitude ““ a willingness to be inconsistent ““
shows a lack of understanding about what it takes to be part of a
successful lobbying effort.

Rodriguez does have experience as a student government officer
at Los Angeles Mission College and has, through involvement in
various campus groups and lobbying efforts, been in touch with
state officials. His idea to bring policy-makers to campus to hear
student concerns, rather than always sending students to them, is
somewhat intriguing, though he offered little evidence that he
could make such effort work.

He simply doesn’t match-up with Kaczmarek.

Kaczmarek initially had plans to graduate this year, but will
return next year to protect the interests of this campus’
students ““ students who should enthusiastically turn out to
support him this week.