Aditi Guatam: Independent Candidate for Campus Wide Senator

A university “by the students, for the students, and of the students.” The slogan embodies my dream for UCSD, and something I have been striving to achieve in the past three years, and hope to continue as an AS senator.

 

By the Students:

Occupy Peterson was my first exposure to student activism on campus, and since then, I have been very compassionate about the issue of tuition and the high cost of education. The university, for the past many years has been arbitrarily increasing tuition with no accountability or transparency on where that money is going. With the percentage of school funding made up of student money, student should have a more control over their money is being invested. This can only be done if the administration is more transparent about how they allocate money and the salaries that they pay their workers, professors and staff.

Students have the right to have this information.

This would also facilitate students being more informed about their university and thus, when it comes to decision making, can decide for themselves the best use of the money. This would also help reduce the cost of education overall because having more representation of students in the decision making process would ensure decisions being made in favor of a better education, and not just for making more profit.

 

For the Students:

Education should be accessible to everyone, from any racial or socioeconomic background. But, due to the high price of tuition and living, this has been hard to achieve. There is not enough representation of many minority groups on campus. By making education more affordable, as well as more targeted programs to help people from these communities to be able to get a quality education should help this lack of representation.

There also needs to be a better relationship with the larger San Diego community. UCSD is a public university and there needs to be a more personal relationship with the community and shouldn’t be isolated from the rest of the community. An open university with community support and a friendly environment would also make it more comfortable and familiar for students from all walks of life and encourage them to come to UCSD.

 

Of the Students:

I have been a Ché Café collective member and a volunteer at Groundworks bookstore, and I think there is a value to these spaces. The university has been systematically trying to shut these spaces and have been successful in doing so with some spaces like the Crafts Centre and Graffiti Hall. The Ché Café has also been under attack and it was only after a 120 days long occupation staged by the students that the university finally decided to negotiate. There is an increased bureaucracy and restrictions on organizations when it comes to tabling and events.

With the decrease in such student spaces, the only real space that the student have is Price Centre, which is so highly capitalized that it is really hard to connect with the area and make memories that would last even after we are gone. We need more investment in spaces like the co-ops, The Black Resources Centre, The Raza Resources Centre and more space to organizations like Books for Prisoners, so they are not compelled to shut down. These spaces would help make the university feel more like home to the students and they wouldn’t feel restricted in expressing themselves.

These are the specific issues that I would like to tackle if students feel I am worthy to serve as the Campus Wide Senator for AS the upcoming year. I feel that a shift into this model of university would help create a healthier overall campus and many political and racial issues on campus can be solved through increased dialogues amongst the students.

There would be a camaraderie amongst the students, and even between the student body and the adjunct faculties and workers that would help them unite in fighting against oppression and injustices. The reason I pay such an emphasis on making the university more student focussed is because I really would love to see a change the environment of apathy surrounding UCSD and make it into the vibrant, active community that it always used to be, where the students had a relationship with the university years later and didn’t see it as a place that they just come in and leave once the four years are done.