My goal was to harness the resources available to the Associated Students Office of the President to foster direct relief in times of crisis and to cultivate a constructive campus environment where those students engaged in the Association’s leadership could positively influence the student body at large. While the success of some initiatives that my office and I began could not be fully realized by the end of our term, I am confident that we have contributed to building a foundation for a brighter future.

After an exciting summer of mapping out the agenda for the remainder of the year, I began the year in my official capacity by issuing a warm welcome to those students for whom 2011 would mark their first years at UCSB at the convocation ceremony [for text of speech, see below]. Those students who answered the call to engage the Association for which they were paying to serve them were greeted in the A.S. Main Office and other centers of the Association by new posters describing “Healthy Habits” surrounding studying, sleeping, and taking care of oneself during and through the more stressful times in college.

The fall also saw my involvement in more statewide issues, having been elected by my fellow UC student body presidents to serve as the undergraduate chair of the UC Council of Presidents. This honor impressed on me the responsibility to pay even closer attention to not just to my own campus, but to the UC in its entirety. Following the instances of police violence against nonviolent protesters––students, staff, faculty, and community members alike––I brokered an unprecedented agreement with Chancellor Henry Yang, Vice Chancellor Michael Young, Dean of Students Yoni Harris, and Chief Dustin Olson of the UCSB Police Department that codified the UCSB administration’s commitment to not engage non-violent protesters with the use of violence [for a copy of the agreement, click here].

My office and I also began to critically examine the pressing need to provide space for underserved student communities on our campus (including former foster-youth, student veterans, undocumented students, international students, etc.) as well as the growing space needs of A.S. in the wake of the Student’s Initiative, while also learning the extent of the need for more 24-hour study spaces and the need for a preventative wellness center on campus.

These efforts continued in the Winter, with our initial space concerns for the purposes of serving the above mentioned communities as well as providing a space for preventative wellness and 24-hour study space corroborated by focus groups and surveys. A proposed solution to this increasingly pressing problem was to construct a building, later to be called the Student Engagement Center, that would make tremendous steps toward addressing students’ space needs. However, the funding for this would come down to a student vote, and in challenging fiscal times, the likelihood of something like this passing would be dependent upon the messaging surrounding the initiative. Amid this ongoing project, I was also asked to deliver the opening remarks at an academic conference honoring the 50th Anniversary of the Port Huron Statement alongside Sociology Professor Emeritus Richard Flacks and original member of the Students for a Democratic Society and a legend among the activist community.

I spoke about the importance of engagement and active citizenship as tenets that should be instructive for our generation as we face our own challenges, including the public divestment from public higher education [for remarks, please see attached]. The Winter also saw that beginning of critical points in the year for the Associated Students yearly cycle: the budgeting process and the spring election. Both came with challenges that had laid dormant for years that I effectively addressed through my authority as president––even when such actions were not unanimously popular. Specifically, I vetoed the Bill to Pass the 2012 Elections Code so that the Legislative Council could address its overly restrictive controls on free speech [for full veto rationale, see attached].

I also became the first president since the passage of the 2006 Students’ Initiative (an initiative that brought the Associated Students budget to the high level that it now enjoys) to draw a limit on unchecked growth by outlining budget priorities for Boards, Committees, and Commissions that serve underserved communities and demanding that the Legislative Council reform the honoraria system. I am happy to remember the 62nd Legislative Council as a constructive partner in both efforts. This proved especially invaluable as challenges resulting from a new UC Office of the President policy resulted in a further stress on student fee dollars.

The end of my term was consumed mainly with battling a tax that would have cost students potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars. This struggle had me in extensive meetings with Chancellor Yang and other members of our campus administration and ultimately all the way up to UC President Mark Yudof himself. I lobbied against the tax at multiple meetings of the UC Board of Regents, including their final meeting of my term. After reaching an agreement on our campus for the academic year in which I served, the future would be determined by successive input from students. The Regents meeting was also a moment of historic collaboration between students and regents––student leadership, myself included, participated in joint lobby visits in Sacramento that made significant progress toward securing funding for public higher education (including a guaranteed tuition freeze should Proposition 30 pass in November). Back on campus, I worked with Student Health to lay the foundations for a more solidified student representative position that could act as a liaison between Student Health, Associated Students, and thus the student body as a whole. As a final effort to make students more associated with their Association, my Commissioner of Budget & Resources Ryan Albin and I created an easy to digest break down of student fees in order to show how much students have access to with the money they already contribute to their association, as well as important distinctions between campus based fees and tuition fees.

While the challenges experienced during our administration were widespread, deeply rooted, and, in some cases, quite pervasive, I would like to think that my office and I worked to solve as much as we could––even if the evolution of solutions outlasts my term in office. For this I would like to thank my student staff and permanent staff––most especially A.S. Executive Director Marisela Marquez––and my peers in every facet of the Association, including my stellar team on the Executive Board: Internal Vice President, Chloe Stryker; External Vice President for Statewide Affairs, Ahmed Mostafa; External Vice President for Local Affairs, Tim Benson; and Student Advocate General, Beau Shaw. I would also like to thank all of the A.S. Boards, Committees, and Commissions for their work in a trying year, especially the Commission on Student Well-Being, the A.S. Student Lobby, and the A.S. Queer Commission. I would also like to extend a most sincere thank you to our allies in the UCSB administration, especially Dean of Students Yoni Harris and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Michael Young. But most importantly, I would like to thank all those students whom the aforementioned have struggled alongside toward a brighter future for our campus community.

On behalf of your peers, the Associated Students of the University of California, Santa Barbara, let me congratulate you on making the best decision of your life.  You are entering one of the most prestigious universities in the country and will soon gain access to a world of diverse academic and social experiences, vibrant political and cultural engagement, not to mention an incomparably stunning campus. The resources available to you during this beautiful moment in your life will be something you will treasure for the rest of it.

But today the clock starts ticking!  While it may seem a distant reality to you now your college experience will come to an end all too quickly.  I vividly remember sitting in this crowd three VERY SHORT years ago. An out-of-state freshman from the state of Maine knowing but one person on this coast let alone this campus, I was filled with an innocent enthusiasm and a giddy anticipation of what was to come. But I was also gripped with serious apprehension.  Little did I know that I would thoroughly enjoy my headfirst dive into culture shock and spend my senior year falling asleep to the crashing of the Pacific Ocean’s waves. And I certainly did not foresee the honor and privilege of addressing you today.  I also could never have predicted how jealous I would be. You have your college years ahead of you and mine are almost behind me.  My advice is carpe diem, to seize the day and make the very most of this experience. Bare in mind, the experience starts right now.

So let’s all take a deep breath in. Seriously, let’s all breathe in right now, being mindful of your in-breath. And now release your breath, being mindful of your out-breath. When things get tough in the weeks and years ahead, remember how you feel right now.  You will need the strength and center of balance you gain from tranquil moments like these to carry you up the peaks and through the valleys in the days ahead. We will all experience unbelievable highs and there will be dark days too.  Taking good care of yourself and your wellness is the first step in crafting a positive college (and life) experience.

The second step is finding your passion. As I look into this promising crowd, I see many more students who think they will be economics majors and think they will go to medical school than is actually the case.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Your major is something you delve into during your college experience, nothing more and nothing less. Unless of course you are an engineer, we prefer that engineers know what you’re doing by the time you graduate. But still my advice is to get in touch with your true self and your genuine passions and then search for an academic path that will set you up for a life of happiness and prosperity, however you define these ideals. At the same time, I advise you to recognize that your future will not wait for you and you should in turn not wait for your future. You are the next link in a long, interconnected chain of students who have fought and struggled to make this campus a better place for those who came after them. There are buildings on campus, for example the Recreation Center and the Student Resource Building, that exist because students had an idea and made it a reality; there are services, programs, majors and departments (like Black Studies and Chicana/Chicano Studies) that exist because students saw a void on campus and fought to fill it. These heroes were students just like us.

Activism is not unique to Berkeley and Activism is not limited to the 1960’s. Though it may take a different form, activism is alive and well on this campus. You may not have known this when you signed your statement of intent to register, but UC Santa Barbara has the highest voter registration of any campus—not just in the UC system or even in the state of California, but in the ENTIRE country—SO high, in fact, that my freshman year Death Cab for Cutie played a free concert for UCSB students when we turned out to the polls in record numbers.  While the press likes to note UCSB’s ranking among supposed “party schools,” this ranking actually falls several spots behind our voter registration efforts. So, PLEASE don’t forget to register or re-register to vote.  Our reputation and, more importantly, our future depend on it.

Also, as you sit in this crowd together today, it’s easy to think that you are all the same and took similar paths to get here. While we are interconnected, every one of us is an individual with a different background. Some of you did not exactly struggle to get to UCSB.  Others fought crippling and systemic oppression to be sitting here.  Still others, many more who should be here, are not because, for whatever reason, they lost that battle.  While different, we are still human beings not to mention the fact we are all students with much more in common than not.  I hope that we (and I say we in the most inclusive way possible to those in front of me and those behind me) can stand in true solidarity despite differences of nationality, age, race, ability, privilege, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or whatever way we identify ourselves. Realize that we have more common ground than we are told. I guarantee that the sooner you understand how fundamentally connected each and every one of us is to the other, the sooner you will begin to live a college experience (and life) that is bursting with significance.

In this spirit, I also hope that together we can continue the fight to preserve quality, access, and affordability in our education for all the citizens of our state. You need only look at what students were paying for tuition my first year, let alone five, ten, and twenty years ago to understand that our society needs to own up to its commitment to higher education. Students have always been at the forefront of social and political movements.  We always have been and we always will be.  Why?  Because we are exceedingly brilliant AND exceptionally sexy.  In fact there is NOTHING sexier than caring about the preservation of our education and the future of our society. There are numerous avenues to join this struggle directly. Why not us?  Why not now?  If this is not your cause of choice, then find another that speaks to you.  Just stop by the Associated Students Main Office, and I guarantee you’ll walk away with a sense of belonging to a cause greater than yourself.  Engagement, Active Citizenship is the key to transforming your finite years on this campus into an everlasting legacy of positive contribution, through which your time at UCSB will live on forever.

So please forgive me for harping on the end of your UCSB experience before it has really even begun. But with a mindful breath and a drive to find your own transcendence, you can turn these few years into a journey that will resonate for the rest of your lives.  Whether you find your transcendence meditating on the edge of the stunningly beautiful Campus Point, contributing to the latest breakthrough in a lab, volunteering in the local community, registering our generation to vote, making our campus a greener place or just soaking up the experience of a Jacuzzi at the Tiki House in Isla Vista, the important thing is to make this moment count.  If you do, I promise your years on campus will live on for the rest of your lives, and your legacies will touch the lives of each and every student that has the privilege and honor to occupy these seats in the future.  Olé, my fellow Gauchos. Olé.