JONATHAN YOUNG/Daily Bruin Newly-elected USAC president
David Dahle (left) celebrates his narrow victory.
Dahle won in one of the closest presidential elections in UCLA
history ““ a difference of 37 votes.
By Marcelle Richards
DAILY BRUIN SENIOR STAFF
[email protected]
Student Empowerment! candidates embraced in a circle as Students
United for Reform and Equality occupied an outskirt corner of
Meyerhoff Park.
Little did they know that what they would hear would end a race
never this close before.
All were quiet for the announcement ““ the presidency goes
to David Dahle by 37 votes.
The SURE slate erupted in a fit of hysteria.
Student Empowerment! threw fists in the air in silence.
“Voltron! Voltron! Voltron!”
Heads swivelled to the pit of SURE members chanting around the
new president.
The scene was wrought with irony.
Just hours earlier, Bryant Tan was the one holding a toy
figurine of the Voltron robot ““ Dahle’s trademark
metaphor for networking ““ above a crowd of supporters
chanting the same thing.
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For five minutes straight, the solid mass of red shirts stood
silent, fists up, heads down.
A sudden start of sprinklers relocated the sparse SURE slate
members to Bruin Walk.
Not one Student Empowerment! member flinched. Instead heads
rose, Tan’s voice above the rest:
“Student!”
“Empowerment!”
“Student!”
“Empowerment!”
For several minutes the slate carried on.
“All ya’ll red shirts, keep ’em on!”
someone yelled in the commotion.
Karren Lane, current USAC president, took center stage, the
crowd shoulder to shoulder. Eyes were glassed over and eyebrows
furrowed.
With full force, Lane said: “We survived Elizabeth
Houston. As the saying goes, it’s not over.”
Houston, an independent who broke the Praxis/Students First!
council monopoly in 2000, took the office by only 127 votes.
 BRIDGET O’BRIEN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Bryant
Tan gets consolation from supporter Anica
McKesey.
That year, Tan said, the president’s office ““ for
which Dahle worked ““ was the “most racist, homophobic
office in Kerckhoff.”
Out of ear shot, the SURE slate watched from afar and away from
the sprinklers.
Tan, surrounded by slate mates, some ousted, some on council,
addressed his audience.
“We’re still committed to making this university
representative of Los Angeles,” he said. “Even though I
won’t be USAC president next year, I’m committed to
that work, and I’m going to be here on campus.”
The energy came back in a flood of cheers for Tan.
With the presidency lost, hopes are set for internal vice
president candidate T.J. Cordero, in next week’s runoffs with
SURE candidate Justin Levi.
Lane left no doubt about the next move for Student
Empowerment!.
“T.J.’s going to be in office. We’re claiming
that office right now,” she said as fists started to
rise.
Cordero will be the deciding factor in whether Student
Empowerment! keeps its long-standing control of council.
The slate currently has four members secured.
Unless Cordero is elected, the slate will teeter in favor of
SURE, which has five members in office.
All that built up to the night’s final face-off had been
built around anticipated victory.
“We’re hear today, we’re here tonight,
we’re always going to be here,” Tan said earlier in the
center of a giant circle of slate members linked arm in arm.
The SURE crowd, partitioned behind the Kerckhoff wall, had only
the victories of unopposed candidates to their name up until the
end.
The congregation of about 20 SURE members seemed almost
predisposed to believe they had lost.
As Student Empowerment! rallied strong for hours on end, the
SURE slate sat slumped on the wall, without a cheer, and
outnumbered five fold.
Arms folded, many putting on their coats already, the final vote
stirred the passive group into a mosh-like frenzy.
Wrestling away from the crowd into the light, the circles
beneath his eyes more visible, Dahle already knows what his first
activities in office will be.
The first, to celebrate.
The second, a more obvious choice: “I’m going to
sleep for a very long time,” he said, sucked back into the
mob.