Editorial: Help keep outreach efforts alive with PULSE

The University of California has had to push, scream and pull
teeth these past few years to get the state to give a dime to
outreach. But with outreach funding down 75 percent from what it
was a couple years back, it’s now up to students to help fill
the gap.

This spring’s student election will include a referendum
on an annual $19.50 fee, of which $13.50 will go to fund the
Student Initiated Outreach Committee. The committee’s
volunteers do work including tutoring, mentoring, and holding
political and cultural workshops for K-12 students in Los
Angeles.

The rest of the money will go to the Community Service
Commission, which sponsors 22 community service projects, and the
Community Retention Committee, whose peer counselors actually have
time to talk to students about academics and other issues they
might be dealing with.

Let’s be honest: Less than $20 a year is really not a lot
to ask.

Student Heightening Academic Performance through Education is
one program the outreach committee supports. The program’s
director, Jullien Gordon, talked about a high school student from
Inglewood named Edwin, whose mentor Oscar is graduating this year
from UCLA.

When Edwin and Oscar began working together one-on-one two years
ago, “Edwin’s grades weren’t going to get him
into a UC,” Gordon said. Edwin got word recently that he has
options: He was accepted to UC Irvine and UC Santa Barbara. He is
appealing his application to UCLA, hoping to come here in the
fall.

Your $20 could buy three lunches and clogged arteries at Panda
Express. Or it could help give a future to students who are willing
to work hard for it. It could contribute to taking care of
transportation and other costs for students who brave Los
Angeles’ bottlenecks to volunteer with programs serving the
homeless, K-12 pupils and disabled people.

Students need to step in and pay where the state won’t.
It’s unfortunate, but it’s reality ““
California’s stingy, and with the budget in the gutter, these
UCLA groups need the money now.

In a lot of ways, the means aren’t ideal but the ends are.
The state of affairs is pathetic; student fees are at an all-time
high, and we don’t even know what we’re paying for much
of the time.

That should be called tuition. But this proposed fee ““
Promoting Understanding and Learning through Service and Education
““ is what a fee should be; it goes directly to specific
causes.

Still, the trend of asking students to empty their pockets needs
to stop.

There are questions of efficiency in spending that need to be
addressed. The Community Retention Committee spends thousands of
dollars each year to provide free printing, already available for
many students elsewhere on campus. Groups doing community service
should try harder at carpooling and other alternatives before
asking for new vans.

Students should vote for PULSE. But in exchange, the
referendum’s beneficiaries need to keep accountable by
thinking about where they could streamline programs, saving money
that could go toward an even greater number of worthy causes.