Executive Vice Chancellor Daniel Neuman will be present at the
Associated Students of UCLA’s board of director’s
meeting Friday for a special presentation regarding the role of the
student union on campus.
Vice Chair of ASUCLA Randy Hall, who will be making the
presentation, said he will be talking about why it’s
important for students to have control over the union.
“I hope to highlight some of the recent successes of the
student majority board as well as discuss some of the challenges in
the future,” Hall said.
ASUCLA provides students with various jobs, subsidizes both
undergraduate and graduate student governments, and oversees the
Student Media, among other things.
Hall said the board hopes to establish a solid relationship with
Neuman similar to the one they had with his predecessor Rory Hume,
who supported the student-centered model of ASUCLA.
Unlike most universities who lease their college store to
outside retailers, the board chose to keep the ASUCLA Store
self-operated because students would have more control as to what
goes on in the store, Hall said.
Though leasing the store to outside retailers would be
advantageous in that “it’s less risky,” Hall
said, perhaps the most significant reason for keeping the store
self-run is that any extra revenue the store makes automatically
goes to fund the student union.
This is considered a welcome source of monetary inflow since,
unlike most other schools, UCLA’s student union does not
depend highly on a student union fee, but instead on the revenue
from various ASUCLA businesses.
Compared to other schools whose student union fees number in the
hundreds of dollars, UCLA’s fee is low at $7.50.
But self-operating the store comes with a price.
“We’re a small organization but we need to compete
with big retailers,” Hall said.
That’s not good news for ASUCLA, who will be looking for
any source of revenue it can grasp.
After hiring 80 newly-unionized workers last spring, they will
be paying an additional $800,000 in addition to paying off the debt
from a previous Ackerman Student Union expansion in 1992.
Recently, ASUCLA rejected a long-term proposal for another
Ackerman expansion which would have increased the union by an
additional 35,000 square feet due to financial concerns.
The $20 million proposal, which would have increased study
lounges, meeting rooms, and created more Internet access terminals,
would have also cost students a significant amount of money. This
is because the student union fee would have gone up from $7.50 to
$60 annually.
Ackerman expansion was originally part of the Student Union
Strategic Initiative, a plan developed by ASUCLA designed to
increase student services.
The initiative includes plans like increasing Internet access
terminals in Kerckhoff hall, and creating a brown bag lunch program
where students and professors can mingle.