Thursday, March 5, 1998
New GSA vice president seeks better community relationships
STUDENT POLITICS: Ong hopes to create a graduate network,
increase diversity, protect group’s rights
By Ann Hawkey
Daily Bruin Contributor
The Graduate Students Association (GSA) now has a new
representative for external affairs. Jason Ong took the office of
external vice president on Wednesday, replacing Grace Chee. Ong
will act as a liaison between GSA and other school and government
organizations.
Ong’s goals for the office include promoting diversity,
protecting the rights of graduate and professional students and
strengthening the graduate and professional student community.
"I want to help bring about better coalition building," said
Ong. "I want to develop some type of network that will improve the
sense of community among graduate students," he said.
As external vice president, Ong will represent graduate and
professional students as a member of the board of directors of the
UC Student Association. He will also serve as a representative to
the UC Board of Regents, the office of the president, the UCLA
Alumni Association, and both state and federal legislatures.
Some of Ong’s other duties will include advocacy of graduate
student issues, legislative and university policy review and
general public relations.
The first week of winter quarter, the GSA Assembly held a
special mail vote to determine who would replace Chee, who resigned
effective February 11 due to medical leave. Ong, running unopposed,
received 68 of the 72 votes turned in, and took office March 4.
Ong’s previous experience includes working with UCLA Student
Affairs for the past three years, as well as being an executive
director of the International Student Orientation Program and a
departmental representative for the School of Public Health.
Ong sees diversity as affecting all students and plans to focus
on how it touches individual students.
"There are still a lot of diversity issues going on these days,"
said Ong.
"Diversity has the power to bring us together. It can really
open our minds to a lot of things, but if we’re not that open
minded, it has the potential to cause a lot of conflicts," he
said.
Ong also supports forming a union of graduate and professional
students as one way to protect their rights.
"The administration doesn’t believe in the idea of graduate
students being able to unionize and work as a collective bargaining
tool," said Ong. "My personal belief is they do have the right to
do so."
During her two years in office, Chee’s policies also included
advocating union recognition of graduate and professional
organizations. Chee said some of her main goals included this, as
well as educating students on affirmative action and trying to
preserve it in higher education admissions.
Overall, Chee feels she was able to achieve many of her goals
during her time in office.
"It was an honor, a large and powerful responsibility and I feel
that I accomplished a great deal in that role," she said.
Some of Chee’s accomplishments include helping organize precinct
walks, voter registration drives and phone banking drives to fight
Proposition 209. She also organized the first graduate and
professional student orientation.
Ong hopes to continue with Chee’s goals while moving toward his
own plans for office.
"We’re in a transition phase," said Ong. "We’re still talking
about some of the issues she was interested in and the issues I’m
interested in."
After Chee announced her resignation, Ong was the only candidate
for the office who completed the steps necessary to put his name on
the ballot. This included being nominated by 50 graduate and
professional students.
"Our advertising plan was kind of bad," said GSA President
Andrew Westall, when asked why only one candidate joined the
election.
"The responsibilities of the position take a lot of time. It
involves traveling a lot and you need a lot of rescheduling," he
continued.
"I felt that I could really motivate people into getting
involved and making changes," said Ong. "When the position opened
up, I decided that I really wanted to run."