Thursday, May 28, 1998
Sanity ’98 Strelow
prepares for year
USAC: Three general representatives plan to work together to
achieve common goals
By Dennis Lim
Daily Bruin Contributor
John Strelow is the only candidate outside of the Praxis slate
who won an office in this year’s USAC elections, but he is
optimistic about the challenge.
Elected as a general representative, Strelow (who ran unopposed)
became the first candidate to crack the control Praxis and its
predecessor, Students First! has held over USAC in the past two
years.
Praxis members ran with a heavy emphasis on issues like
Proposition 209, bilingual education and the collapse of
affirmative action, whereas Sanity ’98 emphasized heavy reforms of
student government.
"We broke the glass ceiling!" yelled Strelow as he was carried
upon the shoulders of his fellow Sanity ’98 candidates the night of
the elections.
"Through this office we will be able to offer internships, money
and support to anyone, regardless of race or belief," said Strelow.
A second-year student, Strelow believes that USAC has become
"obsessed" with race and larger political issues that he believes
do not affect the campus.
In the past two years, Praxis and its quasi-predecessor Students
First! had retained control of the 10 main USAC positions,
including president, external vice president, internal vice
president and the general representatives.
Despite being the minority in next year’s council, Strelow
expressed optimism about his ability to work with other USAC
members. Even before he ran, Strelow knew he would probably be in
the minority on the council.
Using internships and political support, Strelow hopes to allow
individual members of Sanity ’98 to enter the political arena.
"There have been a number of people who have disagreed with USAC
for the past couple of years, but haven’t been able to do anything
about it because of the people in power," Strelow said.
"I want to give those people the experience and better knowledge
of USAC that can help them if they want to run for a USAC
position," he said.
Praxis members Mike de la Rocha and Kei Nagao, Strelow’s fellow
general representatives, see the coming year as a challenge.
"Being a general representative would be a challenge no matter
who was elected, but we really look forward to working with him,"
de la Rocha said.
"We are already working with John right now on certain things.
We’ve talked to him about things that we were interested in working
on for next year," Nagao said.
Strelow agreed, saying there were issues that all three
candidates wanted to work on.
"There are issues that all of us really care about, like student
fees. There’s no reason that we can’t work together on those
issues," Strelow said.
De la Rocha, Nagao and Strelow have not set any definite plans
for the coming year, but have discussed what issues they want to
tackle.
Praxis ran for two of the three general representative positions
in this year’s election because it lacked qualified candidates for
all three positions.
"We only ran as many candidates as we felt were qualified," said
Stacy Lee, USAC president-elect. "Also, we felt strategically that
it would be alright to allow a little bit of competition on
council."
Lee hopes to reconcile the differences between Praxis and Sanity
’98 and unite the different slate representatives under one
council.
"It is important that everyone understand their role on council
and for the campus to see us as one council, and not as a group of
different slates," Lee said.
Sanity ’98 failed to run more candidates for the general
representative office due to a lack of time, and misinterpretation
of how many slates would run candidates.
"We basically ran our campaign at the last minute. We had other
people that were interested in running, but they didn’t have enough
time to fill out the application," said Martin Chippas, Sanity
’98’s presidential candidate.
"We also thought that other parties would be running this year,
and they would run for the same position," Chippas said.
JAMIE SCANLON-JACOBS/Daily Bruin
John Strelow was the only non-Praxis member elected to USAC.