PRESIDENT’S STATEMENT

Three Hundred Ninety One. That was the number of days I had left on my countdown the night I was elected Associated Students President, April 25, 2013. I defined my presidency with a strong underlying sense of urgency; having been involved in Associated Students the previous three years, I knew too well that “a year is not enough.” I got the countdown to remind myself everyday that time was running out to fulfill my promise to make UC Santa Barbara a better place. A main motivation behind my candidacy, and that of my fellow officers, was my belief that the incredible opportunity the AS President has to influence change and move mountains for the betterment of students must be utilized to its maximum potential and breadth. This admittedly led to 80 hour workweeks from May ‘13 to May ‘14, but, to put it simply, “a lot got done.”

As I was sworn into office, the general feeling was a sense of excitement and possibility. The destructive UC system-wide budget cuts and tuition increases, that defined my first three years, had seemingly come to a pause with the passage of Prop 30. Plans were in place to transform Local Affairs into a more politically proactive office, in the name of bettering Isla Vista systemically instead of with band-aid solutions. UC Santa Barbara was soaring in development and reputation and funds were beginning to trickle in for basic operations. Associated Students was also in aching need of internal reform after years of uncoordinated growth since the 2006 Students Initiative.

We moved into the office on June 24th, on that day the pace of work accelerated ten-fold. My staff, the other executive officers and I were in full swing in the office every day, working on the foundational bedrock that would reinforce our work the rest of the year. Seldom are all five Executive Officers and their top-level staff in the office for the entire summer and our summer’s productivity proves its worth. It is during this summer that plans for the major initiatives were mapped out and work on them begun. They included: Isla Vista Self Governance, the AS Restructure, Campaign for a New Master Plan, AS 2020 Strategic Plan, Politics of the UC student-led course, AS Endowment, Student Union Revitalization Fund (SURF), Campus-Wide Week of Welcome, I Love UCSB Campaign, the new AS Executive Fellowship, Student Initiated Democratic Education, and an endless list of other projects.

The summer included the most divisive event of the year, Janet Napolitano’s appointment as UC President. This issue early on tested the purpose behind my position as AS President and how to balance the various stakeholders and short/long term interests of the student body. Many students called on myself and other student leaders to denounce Napolitano’s appointment through a vote of “No Confidence,” citing her actions with regard to deportations as Secretary of Homeland Security and her lack of background in academia. I chose to not support the No Confidence movement and urged my colleagues at other UC campuses not to as well. This led to a very productive relationship between the Council of Student Body Presidents with UC Office of the President compared to the UC Student Association.

The External Vice President of Statewide Affairs Alex Choate and I attended two UC Regents meetings, the United States Student Association Congress, and UC Student Association Congress during the summer. It was at these events that we began to evaluate the outcomes of our membership in USSA and consider significantly reducing our contribution to UCSA as it was nearly twice the next highest contributing campus. These organizations are important in the greater student movement for public education, but we believed they required some reform to justify the $200,000+ spent on membership dues and travel/conference fees.

The Fall kicked off with the first Campus-Wide Week of Welcome, a new partnership between Associated Students, the Residence Halls Association, and Student Affairs. This event aimed to bring together not just first year students, but the entire campus community to celebrate the start of the year and re-engage with academic and extracurricular activities.

During Week of Welcome, I had the honor of addressing the class of 2017 and transfers to the class of 2015 at New Student Convocation. In my speech, I stressed the unique ability of students to make an impact on our campus and society, the importance of meeting new people (I asked the students to take 10 seconds during the speech to meet someone new next to them), and celebrated the wonderful balance of activities present at UCSB and Isla Vista.

The newly created AS Executive Fellowship was the hallmark of Fall Quarter. Prior internship opportunities were deemed as not engaging enough for students, so myself and my Deputy Chief of Staff Nikka Kurland set up the program to include, for the first time, educational and professional development sessions every week of Fall, homework and tasks for fellows in training, and upon completion of the training placement into one of the five AS Executive Offices (as opposed to just the President’s Office). This program has proven wildly successful, with graduates now running Associated Students at even higher levels of effectiveness.

The original concepts for the AS Restructure began in the Summer and gathered momentum in Fall. My colleagues and I brainstormed ideas on how to address specific structural ailments of ASUCSB such as “long meetings”  “equality in appointments” “uncoordinated growth” “deficient financial oversight” “overreliance on student fees” or “lack of clear roles and functions.” To find solutions, I researched the history and structure of the various student and city governments in California, including how ASUCSB used to function. Instead of addressing each structural issue individually, I concluded the entire system needed to be overhauled to effectively address them.

After a failed first concept, I was at a standstill during Winter Break. I decided to list out every entity within Associated Students. In doing so, I noticed there was no clear way to group organizations by function – the word “board” had no meaning, many of the “committees” were entirely different, etc. The foundation of the new proposal then was to structure AS according to functions and roles. This is the primary reason why acronyms like “BCC” and “BCU” are inherently incompatible with the restructure, it worked when a “board” was no different than a “committee,” but now there is a clear difference and more entities than just B’s C’s and U’s (we have senators, executives, various offices, boards, commissions, committees, units, and more).

The most radical change came in the formation of the AS Units. They are modeled on our former Business Services and ASUC Davis’s structures. The President, IVP, Controller, and Executive Director focus on working with each Unit to deliver its service fiscally efficiently and responsibly as the “operational” or the “service” arms of AS.

The Senate also received a major upgrade with the implementation of a Standing Committee system based on ASUC Berkeley’s to properly vet legislation. Administrative Committees now provide the Senate with an extra hand in carrying out its Constitutional duties and the “Boards and Commissions” have been formalized as the policy and programmatic bodies that advise the Senate on major issues. Finally, the Executive Branch was made cohesive with the formation of the Executive Office. Other technical reforms gave more oversight to the students duly elected by the student body.

Fall concluded with the launch of the Campaign for a New Master Plan. The campaign attracted strong support and ignited renewed interest in the California Master Plan for Higher Education from many other student governments. It culminated in renewed partnerships between UC, CSU, and CCC at the January 2014 UC Regents meeting.

Winter Quarter was certainly the busiest time of the year with multiple nationally covered events on campus, including a meningitis outbreak, horrifying publicized sexual assaults, and a passionate campus-wide conversation about freedom of speech, the latter resulting from a Senate resolution calling for trigger warnings on syllabi and a physical confrontation between a professor and some abrasive pro-life activists on campus. It took the combined efforts of the Executive Officers and our AS Executive Director, Dr. Marisela Márquez, to steer the campus through these events, notably through a public letter regarding sexual assault that won demands from Chancellor Yang for survivor resources, increased lighting, and additional police officers specializing in response to sexual assault.

Teaching and creating Political Science 106MM, Politics of the UC, with External Vice President of Statewide Affairs Alex Choate and Dr. Marisela Marquez was a highlight of the quarter, with a class of 20 learning about the historical trends of higher education, how the UC system operates, and how to influence change with lawmakers. My hope is that this class continues to build a base of institutional knowledgeable so students can continue educating each other about the state of our education system and affect meaningful change.

The student initiated 2020 Strategic Plan for the entire Association was another radical initiative. It was inspired by the University of Sussex, and includes system that will allow it to be maintained indefinitely. Long-term planning is essential to student organizations with a high turnover rate and I am proud that ASUCSB is one of the few student governments that learns from the past, acts in the present, and plans for the future.

SURF (and reforming the governance of the University Center) was another focus of my Presidency. I intended to continue AS President Harrison Weber’s effort in turning the UCen into a place that is student-centric and address the issue of space for many student organizations or services including former foster youth, dance groups, and Health & Wellness. In a strong coalition effort, we managed to acquire the 3,500 signatures to place SURF on the ballot, but the initiative was ultimately rejected by the voters with only 46% of the vote.

Further, for decades there has existed a paradigm in which students have little to no say over the University Center. To that end I advocated for allowing the AS President and GSA President to act as voting members of the UCen Governance Board along with a slew of other internal reforms aimed at empowering the board and ensuring its responsiveness to student needs. This initiative unfortunately did not come to fruition, but we managed to pass some incremental reforms to the board.

Nothing could have prepared me, my fellow student leaders, especially my successor, AS President Ali Guthy, and the greater community for the challenges of Spring Quarter during which Isla Vista was assaulted by an internationally publicized riot the evening of the annual Deltopia Festival and the subsequent murders on May 23rd, 2014 of six fellow Gauchos with many more injured by a lone gunman. Isla Vista was rocked to its core by these brutal murders, but its true strength shone brightly as we came together to grieve, support each other, and set our community on a positive path. My only further comment on this tragedy will be to remember those who lost their lives that night: George Chen, Katherine Cooper, James Hong, Christopher Michaels-Martinez, David Wang, and Veronika Weiss.

Following the riot, Internal Vice President Kyley Scarlet and I urged the campus community to own up to allowing a culture of destructive behavior in our town and reconsider how we organize ourselves for celebrations in the future as opposed to traditionally laying blame on SBCC students and out of towners.

On a positive note, a high point of spring was hosting the Associated Students Reunion during the All Gaucho Reunion. Current students enjoyed meeting AS Alumni who had once held their position and our alumni were able to reconnect and hear about what AS is doing in the present.

I released my $11 million budget shortly after and with it I became the first AS President since the 2006 Students’ Initiative to put an end to the exponential increase of staff salaries every year in favor of funds towards historically fiscally starved AS organizations and bolster programs that support them. I further restructured the budget to begin looking at using revenue from some Units to fund the activities of subsidized Units instead of raising student fees.

While there were many high profile tragic events in Isla Vista during the 2013-2014 year, they ultimately served as a spotlight on the blight our community has faced for decades. Two days before leaving office (a week before May 23rd), External VP of Local Affairs Alexander Moore and I, along with the other Executive Officers, brought statewide, local, university, and law enforcement officials together to jump start a new and fresh focus on addressing the needs of the Isla Vista community and emphasized the need for local self-governance. Success in this field continues to extend beyond our term, but I will always be profoundly proud of the 2013-2014 Executive Officers for building critical foundations across the campus and county that are being built on through historic progress towards self governance and increased funding for community development and policing in Isla Vista.

My tenure as AS President cements my belief that students are and always will be at the forefront of progress. The power of students is bigger than any one person and I’m thankful to have had a role in continuing the work that came before me and making the work easier for those after me. To that end, I would like to thank my student mentors during my time as AS President: Harrison Weber, Chloe Stryker, Ahmed Mostafa, Kadeem Coad, Nathan Walter, Marjan Riazi, and Raul Martinez. Without them, I would’ve never dreamed of being AS President and they have my everlasting gratitude for that.

I would also like to thank and recognize the faculty and staff who I worked with and learned so much from: Marisela Marquez, the entire AS staff, Jordan Killebrew, David Hong, Elizabeth Vincent, Michael Young, Henry Yang, Marc Fisher, Dick Flacks, and Kum-Kum Bhavnani. I truly believe they all have the best interests of students in mind and work tirelessly towards them.

My most special thanks goes to those who worked closely with me during my time as President and who got me elected: Kyley Scarlet, Alexander Moore, Alexandria Choate, Kristian Whitaker, Corey Lau, Sawyeh Maghsoodloo, Maryana Sklovskaya, Elijah Ettenger, Shannel Keller, Nikka Kurland, Kevin Rudolph, Aidan Brorsen, Ashley Koide and Derek Engen. Thank you also to the residents of 6575 Del Playa for keeping me human every once in a while.

Harrison Weber, Alex Choate, Taryn Sanders, and Beau Shaw – thank you for your much needed support in my darkest hour.

 

Thank you all for the unforgettable year and onward to even higher heights for AS, UCSB, and Isla Vista.