amateur ramblings

The ASUC is the elected student government at UC Berkeley. Composed of five executives and twenty senators, its most important task is to distribute money to student organizations. Many people believe that the ASUC can, in some sense, be an activist tool for “change.” Unfortunately, I don’t think this is true, despite having believed it to be the case earlier. I will argue that fixation on the ASUC is actually harmful to progressive activists and causes in the long-term. Further, I will argue that in the long-term, the legitimacy bestowed upon the ASUC actually disempowers students in their relationship with the University administration and as far as ownership over campus spaces is concerned.

First, a few myths about the ASUC.

Myth: The ASUC is the student voice.

Students’ voices are the students’ voices. While students may come to a consensus on some issues, they cannot on all issues. Furthermore, a unanimous voice on anything of substance is almost unimaginable. When the ASUC proclaims itself to be the student voice, it actually attempts to monopolize legitimate expression in the student body. That may not be the intention, but it is the effect. To defend the ASUC by claiming that any voice may join the ASUC given enough votes only re-affirms the point that a voice must be present in the ASUC to be legitimate, when that is not the case.

This disempowers students instead of empowering them. Other institutions begin to believe that if they can get the ASUC to agree to something, that they have legitimately won over the student body. For example, the University administration, including the Auxiliary, believe that they have done their role of informing the student body by communicating to the 25 Senators and Executives. They also believe that they have been subject to sufficient oversight by communication with these students only.

Myth: The ASUC is autonomous and therefore powerful.

The ASUC is self-aggrandizing. Its autonomy has been non-existent since at least the creation of the Auxiliary, and especially since Nadesan Permaul became director. Recent budget documents obtained by Senator Christina Oatfield indicate that of the $4.5 million in revenues and student fees the ASUC collects every year, around $3 million are spent on and by the Auxiliary. The ASUC has limited oversight over this spending, but even more limited oversight over the direction and function of the Auxiliary. Instead, the Auxiliary oversees the direction and function of the ASUC. Increasingly, it guides the ASUC’s behavior and activities by unilaterally drafting and implementing plans.

The power of the Auxiliary has grown and continues to grow because of its continuity, while the ASUC becomes weaker on account of its periodic discontinuity. All ASUC officials are replaced every year. The turn-around of people informed on ASUC issues is usually 1-2 years. That puts the Auxiliary, and thus the University administration, at a distinct advantage vis-a-vis the ASUC and thus the student body. If the Auxiliary has an agenda it can’t push through one year, it can merely wait the students out and push it through the following year, perhaps after re-branding its initiatives.

The current dispossession of vendors in the Bear’s Lair area is one example of this. As long as three years ago, vendors in the area were telling me that they were feeling the heat from the Auxiliary. Several times, the Auxiliary had a new plan to muscle the businesses out for its own grandiose plans. Now, with the “open bidding process”–which is an intentionally unfair playing field meant to push the businesses, some who’ve been around for decades, out–the Auxiliary may actually succeed, in the face of a monumental failure by the student body to resist the plans.

From the administration’s point of view, it is much easier to manipulate and work with the 25 individuals in the ASUC, than it is to work with the student body as a whole. Thus, once again, rather than empower students, the ASUC disempowers them. The ASUC is an important instrument for the University administration in order to bestow a degree of legitimacy to its own plans.

The only way to truly preserve student power and autonomy is outside of the ASUC. This allows for the widest diversity of views that no one group can ever monopolize and transforms our political activity from something that revolves around the election of parties (and the rivalry between ASUC parties is actually something which benefits the Administration and Auxiliary, and makes watching ASUC affairs a miserable experience for the student body), to the deliberation of specific issues. The current system sacrifices students’ abilities to get a fair hearing because everything for each ASUC official is filtered through the lens of the party rivalry. This hurts students as individuals, it hurts students as a collective, and it impairs the ability of students to organize in general, and especially in opposition to Auxiliary or administration initiatives.

Myth: The ASUC is meaningful.

There has been nothing more disappointing and demoralizing than to watch people who care passionately about the world drown their energies into the ASUC. We attribute meaning to ASUC resolutions that does not exist outside of our imaginations. Worse, we’ve come to believe that exclusively symbolic work is actually effective work.

Initiatives organized outside of the ASUC have more potential. A petition with thousands of student signatures, or joint statements issued by coalitions of student groups, carry more weight–organizationally, symbolically, and materially–than a vote of 20 students. Such activities carry the force they merit based on the momentum they gather, rather than the arbitrary endorsement of 20 senators who represent themselves first, their parties second, and students last. And even when they do finally purport to represent students, they never represent all students.

Myth: The ASUC helps train leaders for the future.

In fact, the ASUC trains leaders for the past. The ASUC is structured in many ways after our federal government, so it is no surprise that the same annoying phenomena that plague politics in the outside world also appear in ASUC politics on campus. More importantly, however, the ASUC is structured around a particular model of leadership whereby one’s very election to the ASUC qualifies one to be a “leader.” Unfortunately, that is not the case.

More than train leaders, the ASUC trains people to be negotiators. It teaches a small number of people how they can act as proxies with the University administration, the Auxiliary, and other third-party entities. It becomes the role of ASUC officials to “manage” or “govern” the student body rather than represent or cultivate it. It does so in its capacity as a power broker, in order to bolster its position and credibility vis-a-vis these third parties. In other words, non-student institutions like the Administration and the Auxiliary might look to the ASUC for support in communicating with, calming, or otherwise disempowering the student body. It does this all in the name of “responsible leadership” and other such terms concocted by the Administration in order to strong arm student representatives into acting on their behalf. 

In a few words, the ASUC trains students to speak to and work for power, not to speak to and work for students. It is a vertical model of leadership rather than a horizontal one. The leaders constantly try to bolster their own position to concentrate power in their own hands, rather than to distribute it amongst the student body. To their credit, many ASUC leaders try their best to keep their activities as open, inclusive, and transparent as possible. The problem, however, is not with the individuals involved with the ASUC, but with the ASUC as an institution. For me, it’s a breath of relief when progressive-minded people are in the ASUC. Even in that case though the positive potential is in the individual–who will be gone one year later–rather than in the institution.

Abandoning the ASUC would force students and activists in particular to be more creative and imaginative when strategizing to implement the changes they prefer. Many of the monumental achievements of activists on our campus, such as the establishment of the Ethnic Studies Department, or the Free Speech Movement, were not initiated by the ASUC, but rather by independent student organizations and activists.

Recommendations

I’ve offered the above evaluations not  as a condemnation of the ASUC, but simply to point out that a lot of efforts by a lot of activists are being exhausted on the ASUC– and I fear that it’s in waste, because it’s geared with the goal of taking over the ASUC, rather than reforming it. I also fear that work “in the community” (and by that I mean on and off campus) is also losing dedicated people and strong organizers because many are opting for the ASUC route– but I could be over-generalizing.

Nevertheless, there are a few ways to make the ASUC a more democratic instititution that is less susceptible to abuse by the University administration or Auxiliary.

1. Fix the Auxiliary

The Auxiliary is getting too powerful at the expense of the ASUC. Its only role should be to act as a Treasurer for the ASUC. The most important personnel at the Auxiliary are those who do advising for student organizations. The rest need to have roles specifically defined and overseen by the ASUC, or should be removed.

2. Democratize the Senate

There is no reason for the Senate to have any job besides distribution of money to student organizations. The Senate should be reduced to nothing but the Financial Committee. Furthermore, procedural reforms should be implemented that depoliticize requests for money. What this might look like I don’t know– but if it’s opened up for discussion to the campus community, good ideas are sure to arise.

As for other issues, such as External Affairs and Constitutional Review, there is no reason why a small group of 20 students only should have a say on these matters, especially since many are not binding on anybody and merely aim to express the opinion of the student body. With technology as cheap and accessible as it is today, it would cost literally nothing to open these votes to the student body via the ASUC’s website. Any student can submit a bill; any student can make motions to amend; any student can vote. The results would more properly represent the student body.

3. Re-define Student Space

There is sometimes a tendency to confuse ASUC properties (Eshleman, MLK) with student space. In fact, this entire campus is student space. Students should work to assert their rights over these spaces and over University institutions as a whole rather than only the ASUC properties. If we focus only on spaces to which we have legal title, we re-affirm the University’s sovereignty over other spaces as well as its exclusion of student insights and preferences on those matters.