By Noah Grand
DAILY BRUIN REPORTER
[email protected] Bryant Tan, academic affairs commissioner for
the Undergraduate Students Association Council, is trying to secure
the position of president for next year. Tan, running on the
Student Empowerment! slate, has put heavy emphasis on student
advocacy in his plans for next year ““ but he hasn’t
always spoken up against student fee raises and other issues during
his tenure as AAC.
Academics As president, Tan wants to continue some of his
academic work on discussing a move to semesters and implementing a
diversity requirement, among others. He would poll students about
whether they prefer a quarter or semester system, as administrators
and faculty are considering going to a semester system. Though he
realizes UCLA’s resources are limited, Tan said he opposes
placing a limit on the school’s enrollment. Increasing
minimum progress requirements so students graduate faster ““
an option preferred by some administrators ““ is a poor
solution, Tan said, because it leads to retention problems.
Year in review Though Tan calls himself a student advocate, he
did not represent student interests at a February Academic Senate
meeting when Executive Vice Chancellor Rory Hume warned that UC
President Richard Atkinson is “committed to doing everything
he can to raise student fees.” Tan, whose slate strongly
opposes raising student fees, was present when this was announced.
As an undergraduate representative, he was allotted time to
comment, but left the meeting early without speaking to attend
class. “You should not be charged to go to any public
institution,” Tan said in an interview later that day.
“If anything, fees should be lowered, not raised.” Many
professors expected Tan to advocate that a diversity requirement be
added to the new GE requirements voted on that day. However, Tan
did not make a presentation during that meeting as scheduled. The
Academic Senate then voted to approve GE changes without a
diversity requirement. “What I wanted to say was to encourage
faculty that if they support (the GE changes) then they should see
it through to a diversity requirement as well,” Tan said.
Implementing a diversity requirement was one of Tan’s main
goals this year as academic affairs commissioner. Because he failed
to meet this goal this year, Tan will pursue this again next year.
Tan was responsible this year for filling 19 Academic Senate
positions created for undergraduate input, but close to half of
these positions were never filled. Tan said these vacancies were
caused by a lack of interest among students and not enough
information for some people who might get involved. According to
John Tucker, the Academic Senate’s chief administrative
officer, this is the highest vacancy in years.
Funding and representation Tan wants to support student groups
on campus by giving them funding based on how much of an impact the
group has on students. Tan and the other members of USAC would
decide how much impact a group has, and this decision would not
necessarily be based on the size of the group. “The work of
those 10-member groups can be exponentially greater than those with
2,000 people,” Tan said. Tan said “only if they could
justify it” would he support increased funding to Greek life.
Part of the Student Empowerment! slate is to represent all
students, but Tan admits that the current council ““ dominated
by his slate ““ has had “not so great” outreach to
Greek life and “an antagonistic” relationship with
on-campus housing.
Housing and transportation Tan plans to address housing problems
by holding meetings, so students are aware of the problems. He
opposes putting students in study lounges, saying he would like to
experiment with other options, including placing more students in
triples. His main plan to address rent control and other off-campus
problems is to start regular discussions with the Westwood
Homeowners’ Association. Additionally, Tan wants to expand
the BruinGo! program to the Culver City bus line. But the program
is on its death bed, and Tan has not specified how he could not
only save, but expand the program.
In the story “Student Empowerment!
candidate’s record is shaky” (News, April 30) John
Tucker was incorrectly quoted with regard to the number of student
vacancies on Academic Senate committees. His quote should have
stated that this is the lowest number of student vacancies in the
last couple of years. Correction posted 5/2/2002