Andrew LaFlamme, financial supports commissioner for the
Undergraduate Students Association Council, has decided to
disassociate himself with the Students United for Reform and
Equality slate. He believes he can better represent the interests
of students without S.U.R.E.
LaFlamme’s resignation from S.U.R.E. raises a number of
questions regarding the current state of USAC slates, and their
likely future direction.
At a campus as large as UCLA, it is difficult for individual
students to win USAC elections unless they are bound to a
slate’s publicity and monetary resources. Thus, qualified,
independent students with excellent ideas stand less of a chance of
winning than less qualified, less innovative students with a slate
affiliation. The short history of S.U.R.E. is a living testament to
this fact. The other large slate on campus, Student Empowerment!,
dominated elections for years before S.U.R.E. appeared. Along with
its various predecessors, Empowerment! has had the organization
needed to consistently win elections by large margins.
S.U.R.E. was conceived as a reactionary slate that would
assemble candidates under a common name in order to beat
Empowerment! It’s haphazard nature was made evident during
last year’s elections, when the slate included candidates who
often disagreed with each other on core issues and others who made
it clear their focus was on winning rather than providing a common
philosophy to the campus. S.U.R.E candidates were successful in
releasing council from the Empowerment! crunch by splitting council
between the two slates and establishing themselves as a name in
campus politics.
The one goals that kept S.U.R.E together at the beginning of the
year was the common desire to change student group funding
allocation procedures. It was successful in doing so, but since
then, with the exception of LaFlamme’s housing prices index
last quarter and surveys of dubious utility, it has been relatively
quiet and invisible.
The Empowerment! slate has changed as S.U.R.E. has emerged: it
has become less powerful and less visible, as is evident by its
significant losses in last year’s elections. There is no
strong Empowerment! president, and they have no clear-cut leader
now. The Empowerment! slate lost seats last year because a massive
effort was made to unseat them; now, with the arrival of online
elections, they face a constituency that’s likely larger and
more moderate than their traditional highly leftist platform. In
order to survive and retain say in the allocation of funding to the
individual groups composing the slates, Empowerment! may have to
become more moderate in order to attract enough students to beat
S.U.R.E. and gain control of council.
The existence of S.U.R.E. and the decline of the Empowerment!
slate speak to an unfortunate trend in student politics. USAC
elections are not about presenting ideas so much as they are about
gaining minimum winning coalitions. This is logical and effective
if the sole goal of slates is to gain control of student group
funding procedures. But it’s unfortunate that instead of
taking advantage of the college environment to make politics about
the issues candidates actually believe in, the slates are now
reflecting “real world” politics, simply paying lip
service to issues they know everyone perceives as important.
And instead of producing strong leaders, the slates are becoming
consortiums of people either willing to sell-out what they actually
believe, or aligning themselves under a banner so that group
allegiance excuses them from individual, critical thought, so they
can win an election.
LaFlamme did the right thing to leave S.U.R.E and follow that
which he now believes will best allow him to serve students.
Hopefully, if slates must continue to exist, they will follow the
same path by focusing on producing strong leaders unafraid of
tackling tough campus and social problems, rather than machine
politicians.