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Aside from terrorist activity alerts, UCLA students already have
their hands full worrying about their own pressing lifestyle
concerns. The perpetual shortage of affordable housing and parking
spaces has already compromised the quality of life for many.
Students must brace themselves for the impact of the UC budget
cuts, which might force UC tuition hikes and/or gut academic and
student services. Furthermore, the UC must confront the strenuous
demands of Tidal Wave II ““ the influx of 60,000 more students
within the next decade.
These are the real issues affecting all UCLA students. But
judging from Student Empowerment’s latest pro-affirmative
action rally, the Undergraduate Students Association Council does
not share our concerns. It is appalling that Student Empowerment!
continues to waste your student fees on a lost cause, to press its
hopeless activist causes on behalf of a few, instead of working for
policies to benefit everyone.
Illustration by JENNY YURSHANSKY/Daily Bruin
However, as long as it turns out its loyal and narrow-minded 10
percent of students to the polls, Student Empowerment! can easily
afford to ignore the rest of us by hiding behind the gaudy allure
of protests, signs and slogans. Hence, Student Empowerment!
deserves be renamed Student Impediment.
Student Impediment gave us trick and no treat when they staged
the pro-affirmative action rally on Oct. 30. Representatives know
that their cause has been thoroughly repudiated by the overwhelming
majority of Californians such that not even their progressive
champion, Gov. Gray Davis, will meddle with Prop. 209.
The need for affirmative action would be obsolete anyway when
the UCs implement President Richard Atkinson’s comprehensive
review admission guidelines. By giving factors of socioeconomic
background, personal achievement and life challenges more weight in
admission procedures, Atkinson gives Student Impediment almost
everything it wants.
But it’s always been all or nothing with these zealots.
They still want the explicit and unconstitutional racial preference
that unfairly and arbitrarily supersedes merit and achievement of
other qualified candidates. Hence they wake up every day living in
the frenzied days of November 1996 as they tirelessly campaign for
a lost cause that is five years too late.
Why can’t Student Impediment wake up and simply deal with
the hand that California voters have dealt them? USAC should
reorient its priorities toward accommodating the needs of current
students rather than worrying about what they will look like.
Student Impediment again reveals its loyalties to fringe causes
at the expense of UCLA students by supporting the addition of a
“diversity requirement” to the already complex and
burdensome general education requirements. The vast consensus of
students and faculty already agree that the GEs need to be revised
and more efficient in order to give students more flexibility with
their education, speed students toward a diploma, and reduce
classroom overcrowding.
However, the demagogues of Student Impediment do not agree. Had
USAC gotten its way, students would have to sit through more
classes that indoctrinate a feeling or an iconoclastic mindset
rather than teach real world skills.
Luckily, students and faculty prevailed when the GE Governance
Committee rejected Student Impediment’s appeals for a
diversity requirement. Karen Rowe, chair of the Faculty Executive
Committee agreed that overwhelming support for a diversity
requirement did not exist among students and faculty. (Daily Bruin,
News, Oct. 18).
It seems that everyone knows what the real issues are ““
everyone except for the coalition bosses of Student Impediment.
Our student leaders may not actually solve every problem but
they do possess some invaluable resources and skills that might
contribute to alleviating some of them. Why not use student
campaigning for practical issues, like promoting rideshare
carpooling, campus events, blood drives or the BruinGo! bus
program, instead of controversial, divisive political issues? Why
can’t our student leaders use their lobbying skills to fight
tuition hikes instead of fighting Prop. 209?
Real student empowerment and involvement does not always have to
be political; it can be quite useful and acceptable just for the
little things. Nonetheless they press on in this exercise of utter
futility ““ or is it?
Perhaps they parade their protests to polarize and excite their
voting constituencies fresh and early for next year’s USAC
elections. Campaign 2002 has already begun and Student Impediment
is determined to maintain its perpetual incumbency.
Overall, I might describe the leviathan of many aliases (Student
Empowerment!/Praxis/Students First) in two words: institutional and
revolutionary. It is institutional because it is entrenched into
power by its own narrow-minded special interest groups. It appears
revolutionary because they parade their protests for fringe causes.
You might as well call Student Empowerment! the Institutional
Revolutionary Party.
If Student Empowerment! continues to regress back to the old
habits of its forebears then students must answer this question for
themselves: Should we elect student leaders that will confront
urgent issues head on or should we reelect people of Student
Impediment and continue to hallucinate in their utopian fanfare and
naivete of protests for lost causes?