Every year, the Undergraduate Students Association Council receives about $2 million in student fees, and most students – the people who pay those fees – have little to no idea where the money goes.
In the past weeks, the USAC Internal Vice President’s Office has attempted to create quarterly budget reports that would follow this trail of money and present the information to the student body in a logical, easy-to-understand way.
The project, though well intentioned, has been stalled by the party politics that have come to characterize interactions among offices in USAC.
Avi Oved, the internal vice president who initiated the budget reports project, ran with the Bruins United slate last year. In fact, almost every councilmember ran with either Bruins United or LET’S ACT!, the opposing slate that elected four councilmembers, including President John Joanino.
Because slate politics are pervasive in USAC, it becomes difficult to separate an office from the slate of the councilmember that holds it. In that vein, councilmembers from LET’S ACT! have delayed the proposed audits because they are being carried out by Oved’s office.
External Vice President Maryssa Hall said she was uncomfortable with the audit because she didn’t think it should be housed in the internal vice president’s office.
This problem is compounded by Oved’s choice to give control of the project to Ken Myers, a fourth-year mathematics and economics student and the former chair of Bruins United.
In the case of the budget reports, the partisan divide on council has come in conflict with the best interests of the student body. If they want to do the job they were elected to do, councilmembers need to drop petty accusations of partisanship and realize that slate politics are pervasive on both sides.
To be clear, the concerns of the protesting councilmembers are not unfounded.
The internal vice president performing budget reports essentially amounts to that office performing audits of the other offices, which has the potential to create conflict at the council table by giving one councilmember oversight power over all the others.
The reports should not be under the direct control of any USAC office, but should instead be managed by an independent body that is already knowledgeable about student government funding and expenditures.
The finance committee, which currently oversees contingency allocations, is one of the only bodies in USAC that can make any kind of claim to impartiality, and it is specifically designed to deal with USAC budgets.
However, even the finance committee is not perfectly impartial. During council discussions of issues other than finances, Cynthia Jasso, the committee’s chair, expresses points of view that align with LET’S ACT! councilmembers.
But her committee is at least ostensibly an independent, nonpartisan body, and it remains a more appropriate choice to oversee the project than the internal vice president’s office.
Myers, who has come up with the structure of the reports and modeled them after quarterly company budget reports called 10Qs, should by no means be banned from involvement. Having had six internships in finance since his first year at UCLA, Myers has experience and knowledge that can benefit the project if he works in tandem with an independent body, as opposed to under the direct supervision of the internal vice president’s office.
The project should not be housed in any one office, but the effort should be inclusive – all councilmembers want transparency, and they should each appoint someone to work with the finance committee to bring this project to fruition.
LET’S ACT! councilmembers will find it easy to discount Myers on the basis of his partisan background, but such reasoning should not be used to shut the door on a willing and experienced student. Slate politics are a part of USAC on some level; everyone’s hands are dirty.
If the council wants to make progress in transparency, they have to acknowledge that fact and work toward inclusive solutions to make projects like Oved’s and Myers’ a reality.
Email Delgadillo at [email protected] or tweet her @ndelgadlilo07. Send general comments to [email protected] or tweet us @DBOpinion.
