When she’s not helping her residents, leading campus tours during Triton Day, volunteering at the Triton Food Pantry, or fulfilling any number of responsibilities, junior Tara Vahdani is campaigning for THRIVE, a slate she founded this year for Associated Students of UCSD (AS). THRIVE is a self-described “equity-minded, progressive” slate, and Vahdani is its Presidential […]

Junior Dennis Yeh calls himself “the anti-slate candidate.” Running as an independent, Yeh’s platform for AS President focuses on reforming the AS budget, increasing funding for some student organizations, and representing students who he feels have been excluded by AS in previous years. He’s an international studies major with a focus in political science. Yeh […]

“If I ask you to make a PB&J sandwich, everyone here will have a different way of making a PB&J sandwich, right?” This is how Gus Guerrero jokingly explained student government. He believes that although different student leaders will have different approaches to student government, they will all end up with the same sandwich. Although […]

“How is it possible that at a renowned institution like UCSD, students are finding themselves both food and housing insecure?” Lesly Figueroa, the Student Manager at the Triton Food Pantry, has been asking this same question for more than two years. The Pantry was created in 2015 to serve food insecure UCSD students and Figueroa […]

Refilwe Gqajela has a second home in the Oakland Public Library System. For Gqajela, the impact of libraries and the resources they provided her hometown of Oakland are crucial to her understanding of what it means to be rooted in community. It was in the Oakland Public Library System that Gqajela got her introduction to […]

Adán Chávez got his start in student activism as a freshman. Rallying against tuition hikes eventually became protesting against anti-immigrant chalkings on campus, and that became working on a committee to ensure funding for undocumented students. “I think for me, I’ve been really able to see how it’s important to have [activist voices and legislative […]

Matthew Alan Arrollado wears crocs to Associated Students Senate meetings, cracks jokes about racecar beds with buddies from the ERC Student Council, and takes serious issue with a lack of transparency in student government. Arrollado, a marine biology major and the current AS Senator for Eleanor Roosevelt College, is running for Vice President of Campus […]

Matthew Arrollado has an album on Facebook entitled “the thrive meme,” with 105 photos of orange objects with captions like “this plate is THRIVing.” It’s an unconventional advertising strategy, but THRIVE, a new progressive campus political party (or slate), is trying to make themselves notable to reach out to the student body. Arrollado is their […]

How can this research institution benefit the local community? That’s the question Students Determined, a progressive campus political party, wants to ask the campus community and if elected, address. This year, in the third iteration of the slate, they are running two executive candidates and twelve of a potential thirteen candidates for AS Senate. Students […]