After nearly two decades of sounding the clarion call to progressivism from Kerckhoff’s towers, Students First! now risks looking out of touch and anachronistic. The slate suffered a near-total defeat at last year’s polls, and the opposition, Bruins United, despite failing to fulfill last year’s campaign promise to build an on-campus bar and bring ticketed concerts to Pauley Pavilion, has established itself as the strong, immutable voice of a moderate campus no longer enthused by the fiery activist spirit of earlier decades.
Students First! is smart, therefore, to style its campaign after the inclusive Obama-style progressivism of this decade. Their hip new blue and gold shirts, which implore students to “judge me by the content of my platform, not the color of my shirt,” symbolize a shift in this direction. They appeal to the 8-clapping majority while still advocating the progressive ideals that drive their desire to govern.
To understand Students First!, one must look at history. Members see themselves as did the progressives of a bygone era. They see students as a powerful force for global change, just as students did in the 1960s when they led the movement to create the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. In 1969, two of those students, Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter and John Huggins, were shot to death in Campbell Hall, in part because of a disagreement between students and community groups over who would direct the center.
Many Students First! supporters understand progressivism in the way Carter and Huggins did. Progress is imperative. Sadly, though, few students outside the slate’s core share this view. Indeed, most students oppose racism and sexism, favor progressive taxation, and applaud efforts to bring qualified minority students to UCLA. Isolated in the tony hills of Westwood, however, students feel those battles have already been won. High school history teaches that the civil and students’ rights era is over. Whether this perception is right is beside the point; it is how students feel that influences their vote.
This new student mindset drove the rise of Bruins United a few years ago, and created a new political economy on campus. Bruins United directed money away from the small cadre of progressive, identity-based student organizations that make up the Students First! constituency and historically drove progressive change on campus. Members of this old guard now feel shut out by student government. Christina Davila, MEChA chair, said that Bruins United has made it hard for her organization to function. She said USAC has failed to give her information about important deadlines, such as the due date for the all-important office space application.
Other organizations, though, have benefited greatly. Some formerly disenfranchised organizations, many of them more interested in partying than progressivism, such as the Greeks, saw their funding double. Whereas once only a few progressive students cared to vote in past elections, the average moderate now holds a stake in student government. Like it or not, in order to win, Students First! will have to change its image so as not to alienate these students. Their presidential candidate, Homaira Hosseini, is certainly a new face that can do just that. Though she’s been a committed activist since her freshman year, she looks more like her other half, the one that interned at Merrill Lynch and seems more prone to listening than giving speeches.
Campaign manager Gregory Cendaña has centered her campaign around items of general appeal: affordable textbooks, campus safety, student health and environmental sustainability. While the slate has not lost focus on the worthy yet unfortunately divisive cause of ethnic diversity, they’ve chosen to advocate for it in different terms. Hosseini speaks of “student engagement.” She doesn’t condescend to “educate” students about different “communities.”
While Bruins United has done well by opening up funding and running an efficient bureaucracy, they lack a vision of what students can achieve. Students First! has a vision, a progressive one. Hopefully, as they retool their image to make it more Barack Obama and less Huey Newton, students will realize that Students First!’s vision is their vision, too.
E-mail Reed at [email protected]. Send general comments to [email protected].