USAC recap – Aug. 31

The Undergraduate Students Association Council is the official student government representing the undergraduate student body at UCLA. Council meetings take place every week in Kerckhoff 417 and are open to all students. Watch a livestream of the meetings on the USAC Live! YouTube channel.

Officer and member reports

• USAC President Arielle Yael Mokhtarzadeh said she met with Assemblymember Sebastian Ridley-Thomas’s office Monday and said he wants to have a satellite office near campus. Mokhtarzadeh added Ridley-Thomas’s office has an internship program for students and his office will be giving presentations to the council in the fall.
• Mokhtarzadeh said she is working with the BruinCard office to update BruinCard features so students can put their preferred name instead of their legal name.
• Internal Vice President Vivy Li said student groups can update their signatories starting next week.
• Academic Affairs Commissioner Divya Sharma said he is working with the Underground Scholars Initiative to hold UCPD accountable for wrongly handcuffing a graduate student for suspicious activity last month. USI supports students who were either incarcerated or have had family members be incarcerated.
• Sharma said he plans to work with the Academic Senate to make sure students can access free textbook materials online. He added he thinks professors should notify students if they profit off of textbooks they assign to students.
• Financial Support Commissioner Aaron Boudaie said his office has released applications for its fellowship program, which he said will allow freshman and transfer students to learn more about USAC.
• Facilities Commissioner Zahra Hajee said Powell Library plans to renovate its fountains and restrooms next year.
• Hajee said her office will send letters to the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, next week to demonstrate solidarity after violence at a right-wing rally in the city last month. She added she met with the Registrar’s office to see if they can send students emails notifying them of their enrollment appointments.
• General Representative 1 Nicole Corona Diaz added she met with the director of UCLA Spark, a crowdfunding website on campus, to talk about crowdfunding scholarships for undocumented students. She added she plans to work with undocumented students to create scholarship programs that continue in future years.
• Corona added she met with the director of the Financial Aid Office to discuss different resources they provide for undocumented students.

Agenda

• The council approved an allocation of $85 to the Facilities Commission and an allocation of $930 to non-USAC offices.
• Sharma proposed amending the election code so that slates are no longer provided $200 for each candidate they run. Sharma said he thinks slates already have advantages because they can pool resources and should not have the extra $200 per candidate.
• Li proposed an action item to amend the guidelines for live streaming council meetings on the USAC Live! YouTube channel. The council discussed various ways of archiving live streams and making sure they are only accessible to UCLA students.
• The council voted to table both action items to next week’s meeting because the language of the changes were not released to the public prior to the meeting.