Jacob Lawson won a position on the North Westwood Neighborhood Council as an Undergraduate Student Board Member on April 4.

Lawson, a second-year public affairs student, sat down with Daily Bruin staff writer Amy Wong to discuss how he hopes to enact change on the council.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Daily Bruin: What inspired you to run for the undergraduate student board member position?

Jacob Lawson: I really am passionate about local government, and especially about UCLA and Westwood Village, and when I saw that this position was open, I thought it was a great step for me to be involved in local government and in policy making. In my major, I focus a lot on the intersection between the built environment, public policy and community, and so this felt like a really great way for me to apply my teachings, but also to learn more, get hands-on experience in being an elected official on a small community scale.

DB: What are the biggest issues facing UCLA students in the North Westwood area, and how do you plan to address them?

JL: A topic for concern is sidewalks. A lot of our sidewalks are really old. A lot of them haven’t been replaced since the 1920s. You can tell because they’re still stamp-marked “Janss Investment Company.” I know there’s some sidewalk problems in the apartment area, apartment side, as well as in front of In-N-Out.

It’s important not just for our students to be able to get around, but especially for students with disabilities, it’s really hard to get around Westwood when there’s literal holes in the sidewalks and things like that. How I hope to make progress on that is there’s a couple committees in the North Westwood Neighborhood Council, some I’m interested in joining in include the Transportation, Environment and Public Space Committee.

DB: How do you plan to advocate for UCLA undergraduates and ensure their voices are heard in local decision making?

JL: I’m fortunate to be very involved on campus, meeting with a lot of different people, and when I attend these meetings of the neighborhood council, I hope to really communicate what students are saying, what they’re thinking. Students travel in unique ways, different from most other people, different from faculty, staff or business owners in the Westwood area, so really making sure that perspective is considered.

DB: You mentioned that students travel in unique ways, I was wondering if you could help our readers better understand those unique ways.

JL: Students travel in unique ways around Westwood, because we travel for different things. We go to class and we make activity chains of how we chain things together. We might go to one class and then go to the library, then go to a coffee shop, go down to Westwood. And that’s also impacted by our UPass and having free public transit, it might encourage students to take the bus down to Westwood more than they would normally. Students definitely have a different schedule than someone who has a job from nine to five.

We travel in unique ways for unique reasons, whether it’s to study, to hang out with friends, just for recreation purposes, or to get food, groceries or to go to meetings. And so I hope to represent that, because the youth in Westwood definitely have different travel experiences than some of our faculty, staff and business owners.

DB: You mentioned that you’re listening to the student perspective. What are students saying? What are they thinking?

JL: I think students definitely want sidewalk improvements and things like that. I also think that we have a lot of business vacancy in Westwood Village. A lot of our properties are for lease.

Students always want new places to go to – new cafes, new restaurants, new shops. So I’m also hoping to be part of the Business Committee, which is a committee that hopefully can reduce vacancy numbers in Westwood Village, advocate for businesses that can be sustainable year-round with the varying populations in Westwood, and also for housing and planning. It’s a very crowded, very dense village, so definitely making sure that the infrastructure and amenities are there for students to be able to get from place to place and just enjoy their time living in Westwood Village.

DB: How do you plan to work with other members on the neighborhood council to achieve your goals?

JL: I think the committees are a really great place to do that. And I feel one thing that I’ve learned through my own life and especially through my public affairs coursework, is that to make effective public policy, you really do have to look at issues through multiple lenses and from multiple stakeholders, which is why I really like that our board is split up into a faculty board member, staff, board member, business board member, a renter. It’s just other people who live in Westwood, they all bring those perspectives. And I’m also excited we have a lot of people running that have served on the council before, so I’m excited to hear their experience.

DB: What challenges do you anticipate facing in this role, and how do you plan to overcome them?

JL: Some of the challenges that I expect is that it’s easy to have really high aspirations and want to change things, but then when you actually go to do it on the bureaucratic process and looking at different responsibilities on the neighborhood council level, city of Los Angeles, County of Los Angeles, and then also the impact of UCLA and our state owned land, it can be very difficult to actually make actionable progress, especially when you have an all-volunteer neighborhood council. I’m hoping to be able to get around that by just persevering, having those conversations, reaching out, and really being proactive about issues that I’m passionate about and that I know would benefit our community. And I find that if you reach out to the right people, you can make change happen.

DB: If elected, what will success look like for you at the end of your term?

JL: For me, success will look like being a part of at least one project, hopefully multiple projects that actually happen and that I can go and see that it benefits some people that live in Westwood. My goal is really just to improve the quality of life in Westwood. I think it’s a wonderful place to live. I want everyone to enjoy it.