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The traditionally narrow Undergraduate Student Association Council agenda was exemplified Tuesday by yet another rally for affirmative action.
The rally, sponsored in part by USAC, focused on the necessity for students to work for “access to education.” But ironically, the rally itself represented one of the many hindrances that have worked against the UC’s granting this access.
Last year’s council members successfully worked to repeal SP-1 and SP-2 – the measures that banned the use of affirmative action in the university admissions and hiring processes. This was because the UC Regents, and their meetings, were open to student ideas and accessible to protesters.
But the battle is more difficult now. It’s is going to take a lot more than a handful of 100-person protests on a single UC campus to overturn Proposition 209, the initiative that banned affirmative action throughout California.
This doesn’t mean students are now politically impotent. Just because affirmative action is illegal doesn’t mean that other, more feasible and reasonable methods of increasing access to education don’t exist. It’s unrealistic to think that affirmative action will be restored any time soon, and for now, we have no choice but to work around this obstacle.
In burning financial and organizational resources on a lost cause, USAC and its members affiliated student groups are perpetuating the lack of access to education.
There’s more to accessible education than getting admitted into the university. The largest problems currently looming over UCLA include the soaring price (and lowered availability) of housing, as well as the imminent increase in student registration fees.
Many students will find it difficult to access education if they can’t afford to pay for it or to live close to the university. Yet protests designed to counteract these more real, more immediate threats are not being organized.
While affirmative action seeks to only make education accessible to ethnic minorities, working to lower housing costs and to ensure registration fees are not hiked makes education accessible to everyone.
USAC should pay close attention to the comparatively low turnout at Tuesday’s rally. The low numbers should speak loudly to USAC that the majority of students they represent are sick of single-issue politics and tired of student government ignoring other issues that are more directly relevant to everyone.
Organizing protests is difficult, especially for students with little resources and even less time. But at the same time, protest is the most effective means of making the student body’s concerns heard. More students are bound to support a protest that includes access issues not specific to minorities – and they’re likely to show up in larger numbers for a protest of that nature if it’s organized. All they need is leadership – and USAC needs to provide it.
Unlike any other organizations on campus, USAC has the power and legitimacy to shape student thought and to effect meaningful change – they need to exercise this ability.
Until USAC and its affiliated student groups learn that pursuing a lost cause instead of focusing on making change that’s possible, they – along with the state and the UC – will continue being an obstacle to access to education.