By David Dahle
In the article bashing me last Friday (“Dahle shows lack
of interest, commitment,” Viewpoint, April 26), Kim Le Pham
and Andrian Nguyen of the Vietnamese Student Union (VSU) said that
I was disinterested in the group endorsement hearing that took
place last Monday evening.
Not only was I disinterested during the endorsements, but I was
also thoroughly disgusted by the farce that my slate was put
through. Out of the 20-plus groups that presented questions at the
forum, only two groups were not Student
Empowerment!-affiliated.
The Student Empowerment! groups asked questions specifically
tailored to their own candidates ““ their minds were made up
before the endorsement hearing even started. As a result, Student
Empowerment! wins yearly USAC elections, and then their council
members allocate the majority of funds to their own groups and keep
other deserving groups uninformed about the funding process. What
it comes down to is that Student Empowerment! groups use council to
hoard USAC money. There are over 200 registered groups that are
eligible for USAC support, yet they are kept in the dark because
Student Empowerment! controls USAC by controlling the funding
allocations.
Pham and Nguyen also cited that my tenure this year as USAC
general representative was “unspectacular.” This must
mean that the year was depressingly pathetic for the Student
Empowerment! council members, who have little to no results to show
for their huge office budgets and staffs.
Despite getting publicly bashed earlier this year, I took on the
city and the Department of Transportation to get a much-needed
crosswalk at the bottom of the so-called “rape” trail
because students asked for it. To all those who are wondering about
the status of the crosswalk, it has just recently been approved. I
am the first and only USAC council member since I came to UCLA that
has elicited student opinion using randomized wide-scale campus
surveys via e-mail. My survey was sent out to 3000 students,
because unlike Student Empowerment, I believe student government is
only effective when you ask people what they think instead of going
on your own agenda.
I used my office to be a true representative of all students
““ not just the ones that voted me in. I have no allegiance to
any one group, constituency, or ideology on campus ““ my only
goal is to make USAC the effective government I think it can be,
instead of the self-serving political machine that it is now.
Pham and Nguyen also imply that I do not have any interest in
supporting outreach efforts to underrepresented groups. For the
past academic year, I have been a UC outreach counselor to local
high schools in the LA area. Over 20 of the high school seniors
that I mentored this year were accepted to UCLA, and over 60 were
accepted into the UC system in general. If I didn’t care
about increasing the diversity at UCLA, I would not have looked for
a job as an outreach counselor.
My detractors also conveniently forgot to mention that I was a
member of Vietnamese Reaching Out to Aid the Community (VRAC) last
year. I spent many Saturday mornings tutoring minority students at
Hawthorne Middle School with many VSU members. The reason that I
decided not to participate in VSU this year is because I cannot be
part of a Student Empowerment! group that “empowers”
itself by restricting resources to other groups on campus. Student
Empowerment! neglects the needs of everyone else, and only caters
to its own members. Their approach is wrong and I am confident that
students will see that I can make a difference if elected next
year.