Associated Students Elections Supplement 2014 by The Bottom Line (UCSB)

TBL | April 22-24, 2014

2 | PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES

Photo Courtesy | Megan Foronda and Sally Oh

NAVKIRAN “NAVI” KAUR, // DPP Interview by Anjali Shastry OPINIONS EDITOR Why do you want to be AS president? I want to be AS president because I have been on the ground organizing on this campus really since day one of my undergraduate career at UC Santa Barbara. I got involved with Associated Students literally within my first quarter at UCSB; I was actually a fellow for the Office of the President–funny story, actually, I guess that’s where it starts… So then I got more involved, I actually decided to run my freshman year. That happened, and I found my place with DP Party, and that was when I was co-chair for the student commission on racial equality, and then I ran again. I got to be a senator the second half of the year, actually, my second year, and it was an interesting year… I also learned a lot there, how to stay true to your values, and how to represent all people, really, as well, like people on this campus. It opened my eyes to more isms, like classism, more about racism, misogyny, how patriarchy functions as well. I started noticing a lot of things that bothered me about Associated Students, and how just–how just really messed up it is right now. It’s really not, in my opinion, representing all students. I feel like Associated Students has not been associated with the students. I feel as though there’s just a lot of disconnect between Associated Students and the actual students that do work on this campus, like the actual organizing, where things are actually getting done, I think they’re disconnected… I’ve been a part of Associated Students since my freshman year, so I really do understand Associated Students fairly well, I feel. And I have been a part of the students who work on the ground, who organize as well, and so I feel like that that’s why I want to be president. I want to connect that bridge and organize in Associated Students. I want to be sure to represent all students on this campus, the students on the ground, the working-class students, the student workers, the undocumented community, the queer community, the trans community, my community as well. I also am here because I’m representing all of those people. I want to be the vessel, or the vehicle, for their change, for the goals of their community as well… Also, I feel like on top of that, I have great networks with administration on this campus; I worked in Office of Student Life, Multicultural Center, I’m a NUFP fellow, for the Student Affairs Fellowship, and so I know a lot of administration through that. I feel like all these different connections will lead to a very productive Associated Students. Sorry that was so long! That question just made me think. Student apathy for the Association is still a persistent issue. How do you plan on making AS a more inclusive association? I don’t like the phrase apathetic students. I don’t feel like students are apathetic; I feel like students are unaware of the issues, and I feel like students need to learn more, need to learn differently. For example, the European Traditions requirement–we don’t even need that requirement. Let’s add a Sexual and Gender requirement, let’s add a more diversity requirements, more ethnicity requirements, because I feel as though things of that nature will help educate the student body more than the European Traditions requirement. We’ve grown up our whole life learning Western form of education. I feel like that’s where it starts, with education. I don’t feel as though students are apathetic. What will you do as president to address continued state divestment from higher education and subsequent rising UC tuition?

Ooh, that’s a great question. First and foremost, I would definitely continue actively lobbying our representatives, both at the state and national level. I also believe that we should also obviously be lobbying our representatives at the local level as well, and I think we should really be promoting student lobby…more as well to send larger groups of students to the lobby. I think that should be publicized more as well. I also feel like organizations, like the University of California Student Association, and the United States Student Association, are very important for this reason. They bring students from around the state–UCSA–and for USSA, students around the nation, together, in one space, and that’s really important. That helps build statewide and nationwide coalitions and networks. We can use that to build student power, and we have power in numbers, so organizations like those are really, really critical for the student movement. Really, if you have statewide networks, we can mobilize, you know, 10,000 students to Sacramento. That’s been done in the past; we can definitely do that again. That requires statewide networks and a lot of statewide organizing and knowing how to navigate conferences like the University of California Student Association conferences and sending hundreds of students to those conferences and really being actively engaged in those spaces. The same goes for USSA. Their conferences are really important and we should be sending students there. We should be actively engaged and participating in the organization. What will you do as president to defend student organizations? That’s a great question. I think first and foremost, it’s about what student organizations want. I’m not here to speak on the behalf of organizations I’m not actively involved with, so that would be something I would always keep in mind. Also, I would definitely promote Finance Board to always be very critical about the money requests that come in, and always being very supportive of our student organizations. So I’d also be sure to ensure that no student organization is feeling threatened by administration or other student organizations as well. We need to ensure that all student organizations are promoting a safe environment for all students… I would also ensure that student organizations are getting the funding that they need to continue and to sustain themselves as well. Also, ultimately, I will be present at organizations. I know I can’t be at absolutely every one of them, but I will do my best to be present and approachable. I will continue to do that, because I feel as though I do try my best in doing that as well, and I think it’s important to, again, network in that way, because that helps create coalitions on this campus and that’s what we need. Students really need to be unified and stand together in that way, because I feel like right now, we do have huge disconnects on this campus. How do you plan on creating a fair and honest budget that will keep AS financially sound while simultaneously ensuring the reach and impact of the Association? I would make sure to work with all aspects of Associated Students when even beginning to think about the budget. I think this process needs to start ahead of time; I need to be, for one, always checking how BCCs, for one, are spending their budgets, to ensure that I am aware, ahead of time, when the budget needs to be made for the following year, how BCCs are spending their money throughout the year… I would also be very open and always communicating with the AS administration as well, and our staff, because we decide their salaries and they have families. It’s very important to me to also be communicating with our administration that do so much for us, and our staff that do so much work for us–and they’re so important to the administration. A lot of the Association functions with their help… The BCCs that represent marginalized and underrepresented communities are the ones that really need the support. They really have a lot to do…for their communities on this campus. Therefore we also need to remember that we need to support our fellow students and make sure that every person on this campus is feeling safe and feeling welcomed, and that they have the resources that they need, because we do have to remember that this institution does give privilege to others, and oppresses others in different ways. Different identities are affected in different ways, so we need to remain critical of that, and I’ll definitely take that into account when doing the budget for the different BCCs and the staff salaries… Oftentimes, folks forget that organizing can be done on a very limited budget. You can organize events and rallies and marches under $200, under $100–like you really don’t need that much, and I think people forget that.

Photo Courtesy | OPP

ALI GUTHY // OPP Interview by Anjali Shastry OPINIONS EDITOR Why do you want to be AS president? That’s a great question, been getting that a lot lately. The biggest thing is that I have the knowledge, I have the experience, but most importantly, I have the passion to run the student body. I’ve been involved in this campus community since my first year, and I’m really passionate about making tangible change. So, I want to be president because I know I can do it and I’m passionate about making things happen. Student apathy for the Association is still a persistent issue. How do you plan on making AS a more inclusive association? I think one of the biggest problems in terms of student apathy is the visibility of the association. I think visibility is key, because Associated Students is a place for all students. It should be accessible and open, and people should feel that they can use the resources and services of the association as much as possible–and I feel like we’ve been lacking in that in recent years. And one of the big things that I want to do to improve visibility of the association is really work on our public relations and our web presence, because the Associated Students has over 30 boards, committees, and commissions and various entities, and we don’t really have a cohesive and organized web presence, and that’s a problem. For instance, if you go to the Bike Shop’s website, it’s very outdated and it doesn’t really tie in cohesively to our current AS website, so I really want to make sure that everything that we have going on in the association is very clear, very united, and very accessible to students. Also, specifically for the website: fun fact, I’m a nerd. I research AS and other UCs, I research other Associated Students, and UC Davis has a really amazing budget website. Any entity that is funded with student fees in the association has a line-by-line item of what that money is being spent for, so you could look at Community Affairs Board, for instance–which is the board I’ve been involved with a lot–you can see exactly what all of your money is being spent on in each entity of the association. We’re already reaching out to them because they’re using a very specialized software, they designed their own software, so we’re looking to purchase that from them so that we can implement it on our campus as well for that financial accessibility. Everyone wants to know where their student fees are going. We pay $181.44 a quarter–that’s almost $600 a year–so you should know where that’s going. What will you do as president to address continued state divestment from higher education and subsequent rising UC tuition? That is a huge issue–ginormous. One of the reasons why the higher education has continually been divested from the state budget is that we don’t have a specified portion of the budget. Every year, we have to fight for the percentage of what we get; it’s not like a set amount. So over the last few years, we’ve gone from the state paying 78 or 80 percent of your tuition to paying less than 10, which is atrocious that the state has continually disinvested from higher education. And I see two problems and solutions that have come out of that with the University of California Student Association, one of which being the continued disinvestment from higher education and reinvestment in the prison systems. There is a bill on the floor right now in the Assembly that is looking to reinvest $700 million in prison systems, which to me, is absolutely ridiculous because the state of California alone has 1 percent of the entire world’s prison population–just in California–and we want to spend another $700 million to increase our prison systems, which I think is atrocious. We should

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be reinvesting that type of funds into higher education. So really lobbying our state and local legislatures, I actually went to the Student Lobby Conference this year during Deltopia, so I wasn’t here for all that, but I actually met with some of our local representatives to specifically lobby against that type of funding and reinvest in higher education. So I already have a history of doing that, so as president, I really want to continue advocating for reinvestment in higher education by lobbying our representatives. Also, I’m really passionate about oil extraction tax. California, Texas, and Alaska are the three biggest oil producing states in the United States, and California is the only one that does not have a tax on oil extraction. So companies can extract oil from California ground without being taxed on that extraction. And Texas, for instance, has that oil extraction tax, and they get $9 for every barrel of oil that is extracted from their land, and all that money goes to funding higher education. So I believe that, and again, I lobbied at [the Student Lobby Conference] this year for that to happen, and I feel like that’s another great revenue source for investing in higher education. So overall, I really want to, as president, to continue lobbying our representatives in the Capitol specifically for reinvesting in higher education and away from investment in prison systems as well as the implementation of an oil extraction tax. I know that was a long answer, but I’m really passionate about this stuff ! What will you do as president to defend student organizations? That’s a great question. OPP, which is the party I’m running with, has continuously served to increase funding for student groups on campus. We actually spearheaded the Students’ Initiative in 2006, which tripled funding for student groups on campus. So I want to continue that legacy of supporting our campus orgs, because they’re a vital part to the student experience here at UCSB. Some of our senators are interested in creating an endowment fund specifically through the association for student groups, because right now, groups usually come to Finance Board, which is their main source of revenue–so really ensuring that they have secured funding. Also, one of the platforms I’m particularly running on–we have over 30 career staff members in the association, all of whose salaries are paid completely by student fees. And over the last five years or so, career staff salaries have steadily increased while funding for student groups has steadily declined, and I think that’s a huge issue, especially because the association is here to serve students. So I really want to reassess our current staff positions and–I want to clarify, I’m not advocating firing any staff members–but it’s like, we’ve had five to seven staff members resign this year, or quit, and I really want to reassess when that happens: do we need to still have this person or can we redirect that salary fund towards other student groups, or maybe hiring students to fill the job for them? That’s a big platform I’m personally really invested in, which is creating more student jobs on campus and in the community. How do you plan on creating a fair and honest budget that will keep AS financially sound while simultaneously ensuring the reach and impact of the Association? Like I mentioned before, one of the big projects I want to work on is ensuring that our budget is, and I know people throw around the word “transparent” a lot–what exactly does that mean? For me, it means that any student can log onto the association website and clearly see through very simple, organized format, where your fees are going, line item by line item. I think that’s a crucial step towards creating impact and reach of the association and also allows for a fair and honest budget. Everyone has access to the information; there’s no hiding anything, or concealing it, or having it in multiple places. It’s all out in the open. And I think that makes the budget both fair and honest, and creates better impact and reach for the association. That’s a big thing I want to work on. In terms of reach, I think that also really helps student groups… I feel like there’s a disconnect between the association and student groups. I feel OSLs–and I’m president of an OSL, I’m president of Swipes for the Homeless, which is a registered campus organization–and I feel like usually groups come to the association for funding and nothing else, and I really want to work to create a more consistent relationship, a more open and connected relationship… We have over 500 student groups, and they directly benefit students in so many ways, and I feel the association should have a more close-knit relationship with that, so we’re really working on that.

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