New USAC members transition into, redecorate offices
All the general representatives of Undergraduate Students Association Council sat in their office, talking about patching up the holes that previous USAC officials had left behind. The ones in the walls, of course.
As the new officials prepare for their third USAC meeting tonight, many are slowly moving into their offices in Kerckhoff Hall, ringing in the new council with a style all their own.
USAC officials are currently in the process of transition, as former officials leave their Kerckhoff offices to make way for new councilmembers.
Looking around the barren office, General Representative Brian Neesby pointed out the various holes in the wall, which his two colleagues said he could fix.
“Are we allowed to paint?” asks P.C. Zai, another general representative, adding she would like to paint the room blue.
“Bruins United blue,” said Jonathan Cohen, a third-year business economics student and Neesby’s roommate, who was on hand to see what the general representatives were doing in their office. All three officers ran under the Bruins United slate in this year’s USAC election.
The white walls of the office, illuminated with sunlight, showed the various strips of double-sided tape left behind from the move-out of last year’s general representatives. The new ones alluded to ideas for new items on the wall, such as posters and a bulletin board for newspaper clippings.
Outside the office, in the fourth-floor hallway, the general representatives’ corkboard was empty and staple-riddled. Throughout the move-in process, the general representatives, as well as the rest of the officials, have begun their staff recruitment. All of the general representatives have chosen chiefs of staffs, and have been conducting interviews to fill other positions within their respective staffs.
Marwa Kaisey, the third general representative, said she will look to hire students from the general UCLA student body, as well as certain others she had in mind.
Neesby said they expect to have 30 staff members between the three general representatives.
For the summer, Zai said she would bring an espresso machine, but will have to take it back to her room in Rieber Hall when the regular school year starts again. “We should get a disco ball,” Kaisey said.
Downstairs in Cultural Affairs Commissioner Todd Hawkins’ office, the transition is a bit smoother than in other offices. This is because the office will look exactly the same as it did last year. Former Cultural Affairs Commissioner Shantanu Bhuiyan sat near the door of the office, sealing manila envelopes for the JazzReggae Festival, saying the room is an accumulation of memorabilia from many past events.
Bhuiyan said Hawkins has been training all year to fill the position, and the transition of the office will be smooth.
The room does not look like a traditional office at all. Walls strewn with banners, photos of students at events and T-shirts make for a seemingly random yet welcoming amalgam.
A mountain of boxes, filled with shirts and other goods, sits in the far-left corner of the room.
Saira Gandhi, a second-year international development studies student and a volunteer for the JazzReggae Festival, said the room had been “tagged” – decorated with graffiti art – years ago, but then it was used to film a scene in the 2004 movie “First Daughter,” and the art was painted over.
Now, the walls of the office have taken on a whole new life. “The things on the walls define what cultural affairs is,” Hawkins said.
Down the hall, Internal Vice President Kristina Doan adorned her office with something a bit more youthful – an Easy-Bake Oven.
Sitting atop plastic filing shelves against the wall, the oven lay dormant, never used since its purchase.
Doan said the oven was actually already in the office, from when Darren Chan was internal vice president, but she plans on replacing the bulb to make it work again.
She said she already has a reputation for baking, as she brought homemade cookies to the USAC meeting on May 24.
The oven is just one of the things left behind by Chan and former staff members. Doan said she has progressively moved old belongings out of the room, or has just thrown them away.
“It’s hard asking your friend to move out of the office,” Doan said.
She said the move into the office was somewhat easy because she had been a staff member for Chan and was familiar with the office.
Even so, Doan said the transition to this year’s USAC was “a lot quicker than all of us expected.”
Doan said she hopes moving a lot of the old property – much of it in disrepair – will allow the office to feel larger and more “welcoming.”
Neesby’s chief of staff Jesse Melgares said students should realize they do have a voice through the officials at Kerckhoff, and councilmembers will always be in their offices for students to contact them directly.
“Although elections are over and we aren’t putting fliers in your face, we’re still here,” Melgares said.

