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By Noah Grand

DAILY BRUIN REPORTER

ngrand@media.ucla.edu Bryant Tan, academic affairs commissioner for the Undergraduate Students Association Council, is trying to secure the position of president for next year. Tan, running on the Student Empowerment! slate, has put heavy emphasis on student advocacy in his plans for next year – but he hasn’t always spoken up against student fee raises and other issues during his tenure as AAC.

Academics As president, Tan wants to continue some of his academic work on discussing a move to semesters and implementing a diversity requirement, among others. He would poll students about whether they prefer a quarter or semester system, as administrators and faculty are considering going to a semester system. Though he realizes UCLA’s resources are limited, Tan said he opposes placing a limit on the school’s enrollment. Increasing minimum progress requirements so students graduate faster – an option preferred by some administrators – is a poor solution, Tan said, because it leads to retention problems.

Year in review Though Tan calls himself a student advocate, he did not represent student interests at a February Academic Senate meeting when Executive Vice Chancellor Rory Hume warned that UC President Richard Atkinson is “committed to doing everything he can to raise student fees.” Tan, whose slate strongly opposes raising student fees, was present when this was announced. As an undergraduate representative, he was allotted time to comment, but left the meeting early without speaking to attend class. “You should not be charged to go to any public institution,” Tan said in an interview later that day. “If anything, fees should be lowered, not raised.” Many professors expected Tan to advocate that a diversity requirement be added to the new GE requirements voted on that day. However, Tan did not make a presentation during that meeting as scheduled. The Academic Senate then voted to approve GE changes without a diversity requirement. “What I wanted to say was to encourage faculty that if they support (the GE changes) then they should see it through to a diversity requirement as well,” Tan said. Implementing a diversity requirement was one of Tan’s main goals this year as academic affairs commissioner. Because he failed to meet this goal this year, Tan will pursue this again next year. Tan was responsible this year for filling 19 Academic Senate positions created for undergraduate input, but close to half of these positions were never filled. Tan said these vacancies were caused by a lack of interest among students and not enough information for some people who might get involved. According to John Tucker, the Academic Senate’s chief administrative officer, this is the highest vacancy in years.

Funding and representation Tan wants to support student groups on campus by giving them funding based on how much of an impact the group has on students. Tan and the other members of USAC would decide how much impact a group has, and this decision would not necessarily be based on the size of the group. “The work of those 10-member groups can be exponentially greater than those with 2,000 people,” Tan said. Tan said “only if they could justify it” would he support increased funding to Greek life. Part of the Student Empowerment! slate is to represent all students, but Tan admits that the current council – dominated by his slate – has had “not so great” outreach to Greek life and “an antagonistic” relationship with on-campus housing.

Housing and transportation Tan plans to address housing problems by holding meetings, so students are aware of the problems. He opposes putting students in study lounges, saying he would like to experiment with other options, including placing more students in triples. His main plan to address rent control and other off-campus problems is to start regular discussions with the Westwood Homeowners’ Association. Additionally, Tan wants to expand the BruinGo! program to the Culver City bus line. But the program is on its death bed, and Tan has not specified how he could not only save, but expand the program.

In the story “Student Empowerment! candidate’s record is shaky” (News, April 30) John Tucker was incorrectly quoted with regard to the number of student vacancies on Academic Senate committees. His quote should have stated that this is the lowest number of student vacancies in the last couple of years. Correction posted 5/2/2002