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By Marcelle Richards

DAILY BRUIN SENIOR STAFF

mrichards@media.ucla.edu

If the Undergraduate Students Association Council were a paintball game, the independent would be the paint splattered player in the cross fire of Team Blue and Team Red, the USAC slates.

As elections draw near and emotions run high, sometimes the independents are the only ones who can take a step back from the scene.

Campus events commissioner Ryan Wilson sounded beat after a day on campus and round of mudslinging at the Tuesday USAC meeting over who did or didn’t do what.

“I could feel the frustration from both sides,” he said, adding he abstained from the exchanges.

“I don’t think it should be about taking sides,” he said.

He’s a part of a disappearing breed of campus politicians, though independents have managed to keep commissions as their own.

Next year, the spots are secured for the four independents who are running unopposed.

Luke Patterson, cultural affairs candidate who currently works in the office, is the only one to run against a slate member.

“It’s always been an in-house candidate the last couple of years,” he said.

Before slates appeared in 1995, students used to run for office without affiliation.

After slates were formed to organize groups, everything from council voting to campaigning has been constructed around a pack mentality.

On campus, a swarm of red Student Empowerment! shirts try to out-campaign the blue-shirted Students United for Reform and Equality crowd, and vice versa.

Sometimes people forget the good the council has done, Wilson said.

“Personally as an independent, I see where everyone’s coming from. It’s just disappointing, the politics,” he added.

For the current council, the division traces back to the latter half of the year, when members started to vote along slate lines.

Even when former president Elizabeth Houston, who served in 2000-01, took the election by surprise as an independent, her term was rife with opposition from the Praxis slate in power.

The voting blocs are enough to make some adopt the “if-you-can’t-beat’em, join-em” logic.

Andrew La Flamme joined the SURE slate for that very reason.

Even after he found out he was running unopposed, he decided to stay on the slate.

LaFlamme, running a second time for financial supports commissioner, thinks slates are bad for students and student government, but still said running on a slate makes it easier to effect change on council because of the voting power.

As Patterson looks forward to next year’s council, he, like Wilson, is planning to keep the independent foothold on issues if elected.

“Since I’m not affiliated with any particular slate, I’m not going to be affiliated with any side,” he said.