When I look at them, they are distant. All of my flaws, they lack. They somehow know everything about a campus that still feels so foreign to me. They even look confident doing it all.
And I am told I am one of them, which I find hard to believe. Every Tuesday at 7 p.m., I show up to our meetings in the Bruin Viewpoint Room and feel as though I am a pawn in a game I do not know how to play. How could I possibly be on the same level as all of them when I feel so incredibly small? I find myself doubting whether I belong on this council all the time.
In spring 2025, I ran for the position of transfer student representative on the Undergraduate Students Association Council.
I love my job. But more than that, I feel deep love, admiration and respect for my fellow transfer students. No two transfer journeys are the same, and I cannot talk about who I am without mentioning my own journey – the one that brought me to this school in the first place.
I started my undergraduate career working at the Pasadena City College Transfer Center, where I had the time of my life assisting students with their transfer applications to four-year universities. I met students of all backgrounds, each with different reasons for wanting to transfer.
From student parents and veterans to underground scholars and traditional students straight out of a California high school, I learned so many stories that enriched my own. My once-sheltered perspective broadened tenfold.
Since arriving at UCLA, I have involved myself with the Center for Community College Partnerships, where I see amazing work happen every day. My fellow peer advisors are just as if not more passionate than I am about the California Community College to the University of California transfer pipeline.
They are living proof to me that there are trailblazing transfer student leaders in every corner of this school. We make UCLA strong, and we make UCLA what it is. My work focuses on the retention of current transfer students, and it has been an incredible privilege to collaborate with such an amazing team of people to provide culturally affirming and intersectional advising and programming.
I have never felt the urge to get involved in student government. I knew the archetype, and I immediately counted myself out, as I was certain I did not fit it. However, as I began to notice inequities that pushed transfer students to the margins and treated our experiences as an afterthought, staying silent no longer felt like a safe option. For the first time, I felt compelled to get involved.
When I first joined USAC, I was excited to contribute to the change I wanted to see for current and future students. Unfortunately, student government was not everything I had hoped it would be – when I raised concerns about academic inclusion, campus life accessibility and student housing, my thoughts were shrugged off. I was told I still had much to learn as someone new to campus. My hard work, project proposals and initiatives were often stolen from me, and it was comedic how people loved my ideas when I was not cited as the author.
I ran for transfer student representative because I got fed up with the hierarchical structure of USAC that seemed to always count transfer students out. Last year, despite making up more than a quarter of the undergraduate student population, transfer students only occupied 9.4% of executive and director positions across our student government. The numbers were disproportionate, and I still stand by what I said in the interview I gave to the Daily Bruin earlier this school year.
As a councilmember, I have noticed the term “transfer student” is thrown around quite often as a political tool, and it feels disingenuous. The number of times my fellow councilmembers reference a transfer student experience they do not fully comprehend, often to preserve their own images, only deepens the divide between traditional and transfer students. Rather than taking the time to learn about the transfer student experience by speaking with students or participating in my office’s Transfer Awareness Trainings, they tokenize us.
Transfer students are remembered only when it is convenient for the officer. I have gotten into several arguments and debates with members of the council who only include us when it fits their agenda. Despite my efforts this school year, not many of my fellow representatives feel the urge to change their hiring practices to be more inclusive of transfer students.
The transfer student experience is not a political tool. We do not exist when convenient for traditional students. Transfer students do not need to be spoken for by USAC, we need to be listened to.
If USAC truly claims to represent all Bruins, it must start acting like it.
Hyerim Yoon is a fourth-year English and history student at UCLA and the 2025-26 USAC transfer student representative.
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