USAC ends battle, reaching compromise with presidential appointments

Melinda Dudley
Published: Monday, August 29, 2005

Presidential appointments have been a flash point of political conflict for undergraduate student government this summer, but councilmembers have come to a compromise over heavily contested appointments.

Ending a bitter battle over appointments to the Student Fee Advisory Committee, the Undergraduate Students Association Council approved second-year sociology student Gregory Cendana and fourth-year Chicana/o studies and political science student Daniela Conde for two-year appointments at its Aug. 23 meeting. The committee is the sole advisory body at UCLA that makes recommendations on how student fees should be allocated to campus entities.

Councilmembers from the Bruins United slate had previously attempted to prevent council from voting on the appointments at an Aug. 16 meeting by staging a walkout after attempts to negotiate the appointments stalled.

The difficulty in making appointments stems from the fact that the president holds the sole power to select candidates for positions, but a majority vote from USAC is required to approve the appointment. On this year’s council, the president and the majority come from opposing slates.

But after a week of negotiations, both sides of the argument came to a compromise, which involved accepting President Jenny Wood’s candidates for the Student Fee Advisory Committee and a group of candidates with diverse viewpoints for the Undergraduate Students Association Judicial Board.

“We had a lot of discussions about the appointments in general, and I reiterated to many councilmembers the qualifications of the appointees, and really stressed why I think they’re the only qualified candidates,” Wood said.

Councilmembers said coming to a consensus on the appointments was especially difficult because not all councilmembers were willing to work together with the same goal in mind.

“We had met four or five times on SFAC and J-Board,” said General Representative Ryan Smeets. Each time, they were stonewalled, he said.

Smeets said his slate isn’t trying to get a Bruins United majority on any body, but due to their commitment to get fair and balanced students appointed, there are certain candidates they cannot compromise on.

“We’re in a situation right now where we’re doing a great job trying to extend our hand and we’re not being met on (Wood’s) side,” Smeets said.

Wood maintains that the controversy that has plagued the appointments this year, and the staunch refusal of both sides to compromise until forced, stems from elected councilmembers’ role as student advocates, not as politicians.

“This wasn’t an issue of any sort of politics, but an issue of wanting the most experienced and the most qualified students to sit on these committees,” Wood said.

Facilities Commissioner Joe Vardner said the end result for the Judicial Board is that the political leanings of appointees will now be fairly distributed between slates, interests and those who are truly unbiased and have no political leanings.

“J-Board, since it’s the only board which can override council ... we’re trying to get it as unbiased and non-partisan as possible, and it really hasn’t been that way the past couple of years because council has been dominated by one slate,” Vardner said.

Although council’s lines of communication may not be fully open and elected councilmembers with opposing viewpoints may not be in favor of working together, only recently have outside discussions and negotiations streamlined happenings at the council table.

Since its installation in May, this year’s council has struggled to come to conclusions over heavily contested issues, with meetings frequently adjourning frequently past midnight. The council’s efforts to prevent these marathon meetings in the future include more outside discussion and preset time limits for agenda items.

But appointments aren’t over yet. This week council plans to approve its budget review director, who oversees the committee that determines operational budget allocations for student groups.

In spring, the appointment of a budget review director proved problematic and ultimately impossible for council – eventually it was forced to appoint someone temporarily to position and continue voting at a later date.

Vardner expressed concern with the late and sudden appointment, saying that he and other councilmembers were not consulted.

“After such a huge deal was raised over appointing an interim (budget review director) – three weeks of voting on that in spring – no one’s opinion was asked for this time around, and that’s kind of alarming,” Vardner said.

Councilmembers maintain that they are working on improving inter-council dynamics and communication, but work still needs to be done to realize their maximum effectiveness for the student body.

“It’s issues like appointments where we need to see compromise on all sides, and we haven’t seen that yet. But we’ve got the rest of the year,” Vardner said.