This year’s ASUC election comes at a time of massive upheaval and significant conflict over the future of UC Berkeley. Currently, the student body faces threats to funding, a campus administration that is unwilling to protect the rights of its students to free speech and a federal government that has terrorized communities with an unaccountable militarized police force. This is a time of incredible danger for the campus community that requires transformative executive leadership with clear platforms and an ASUC Senate that is willing and able to confront power. While we fully believe in the capability of the candidates receiving The Daily Californian’s endorsement, The Editorial Board is deeply concerned about the functioning of the ASUC and the body’s floundering political imagination.
UC Berkeley students pay for the ASUC’s budget through a $34 student fee each semester. This money is largely used to fund the operations of registered student organizations. The ASUC does this part of its job very well and materially benefits students through the thriving student-club scene it has managed to nurture on campus.
However, the student body does not simply elect our representatives to make our experience at UC Berkeley more fun. The ASUC does not exist to just fund RSOs. It is capable of doing more.
In fact, the organization shoulders a historical burden to do more. In the 1960s, ASUC senators were active in establishing the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley. In the 1980s, the body coordinated student resistance to apartheid in South Africa. Over the past few years, it has become clear that a number of ASUC officeholders either do not grasp the power of their office or are unwilling to utilize their office to meaningfully protect students from a predatory federal government and a spineless administration.
It should be clear and obvious that the ASUC is confronting power, not through contrived written statements or performative town halls but through the weight of the body’s achievements. This Editorial Board does not believe that the student body can content itself with a student government whose constituents have not seen it effectively stand up against the powers that be.
While ASUC funding is largely allocated by the same administration that the ASUC exists to counterbalance, the ASUC has leverage that it can use to ensure that student interests are met. It plays an important part in ensuring centers of student life on campus continue running, and it could stop doing so. It allocates funding to RSOs and other campus institutions. It is directly engaged with a number of important student organizations. These both insulate its funding from cuts and provide the body with meaningful leverage in discussions with campus administration.
In short, the ASUC still has the potential to be more than distributors of funds, but a real leader on campus. Formally, it could engage in hardball, strike-style tactics during negotiations with campus administration. It could coordinate opposition to dangerous campus decisions — such as the suspension of Computer Science lecturer Peyrin Kao — and could provide resources to students and lecturers displaced by an administration that is complying with the federal government’s authoritarian ambition. It could also redirect resources toward, to name a few, students’ basic needs, legal defense funds and the organization of campus politics. A shockingly small portion of interviews this Board conducted engaged with any of these ideas.
This board believes the ASUC has two paths forward. It may be a junior partner in administering UC Berkeley without meaningful decision-making power, or it may reclaim its historical role as a politically relevant actor on campus. The board understands that the latter is easier said than done. Anything less, however, condemns the body to permanent marginality.
Should the body continue on its current trajectory, it is time, at least, to recognize it for what it is: no longer a true and adequate representation of the student body but an internship and pre-professional social club for students interested in law and politics.
Editorials, including endorsements, represent solely the opinions of the student editorial board of The Daily Californian and not those of the University of California or any non-student party.