Student regent-designate wants to tackle financial aid, campus climate in coming year

UC Berkeley undergraduate Sadia Saifuddin became the first-ever Muslim and the second undergraduate in a decade to be appointed student regent-designate last week.

The student regent is the only student who serves as a voting member of the UC Board of Regents, the board that makes decisions on issues like tuition, where the UC spends its money and the construction of new buildings.

As student regent-designate, Saifuddin is next in line for the position after Cinthia Flores, a UCI law student, UCLA alumna and the current student regent.

Saifuddin was born into a family of Pakistani immigrants. As a devout Muslim, she says Islam is what inspires her to be a better person each day.

But she added that she doesn’t want people to just label her as a Muslim.

“It’s not my only identity. I’m also a woman. I’m also someone that loves popcorn-flavored jelly beans,” she said.

She currently serves as a senator in UC Berkeley’s student government. In her time at the university, she has managed student government funds, coordinated a UC-wide student committee on campus climate and helped coordinate a food pantry for UC Berkeley students.

In her first year as a senator on UC Berkeley’s student government, the Associated Students of the University of California, she co-sponsored an ASUC Senate bill that called for the Senate’s divestment from companies that help finance the Israeli military.

Her history with divestment was controversial to some who opposed her appointment before she was approved as the next student-regent designate at last week’s regents meeting.

Regent Richard Blum was the only regent to abstain from voting on Saifuddin’s appointment.

“(Divestment) is very divisive,” he said at last week’s UC regents meeting, when Saifuddin was approved. “If you’re going to be the student representative, you have to represent all the students.”

In the next two years, one of Saifuddin’s main priorities will be bolstering financial aid for students.

When her family’s income rose just above the mark that would qualify her for financial aid, her scholarships were taken away and she said she had to take on extra work to pay her tuition, working 21 hours a week.

“It’s really hard to focus on being a student when you are swamped; you could barely make ends meet,” Saifuddin said. “And it shouldn’t be.”

She said she hopes to convene a financial aid task force to make it easier for students to apply for aid.

Saifuddin also wants to focus on campus climate, which Flores also shares as a main priority for the next year. Saifuddin said campus climate has been compromised by hate crime incidents on campuses in the UC, and that perhaps UC officials are not currently in touch with students enough to be familiar with the issue.

“(UC officials) don’t always know what it is like to be a student, what it feels like to be a student feeling unsafe on campus,” Saifuddin said. “That troubles me because every student should have the ability of attending a campus and feeling safe, and unfortunately, that’s not the case right now.”

She said she hopes to bring different groups of students to meet with UC officials twice a year and discuss their experiences with campus climate.

Flores said she looks forward to collaborating with her successor. Saifuddin will sit beside Flores at regent meetings throughout the next year before taking over the student regent position herself.

“I think (Saifuddin) is going to bring a much needed refreshing perspective as an undergraduate student,” Flores said. “I’m hoping to incorporate both undergraduate and graduate issues through our partnership.”