May 20th, 2016 | By Kevin Sabo | UC Berkeley
If there is a common theme in the last year of UC student activism, it is that our collective impact is maximized when students tell our real stories. We knocked on doors of decision makers offering them the opportunity to listen. We humanized our experiences by coming to them with more than numbers, but also the audacity to show them what it means to be a student at the University of California in 2016.
We asked university leaders to consider relieving the overcrowding in our counseling centers because our mental health services must keep up with our expensive, demanding education. It is shameful that it takes 21 days to get an appointment. It is disheartening that only a small fraction of counseling staff reflects the diversity of the UC.
We found the courage to tell the world we are hungry and homeless. For years, the UC has turned its back on food insecurity and colossal housing prices. The Global Food Initiative and President’s Housing Initiative are important first steps, both directly resulting from student advocacy. The UC must take the full cost of attendance seriously, because food and housing insecurity is a major barrier to completion, especially for low-income students, first-generation students, transfer students, student parents, and students of color. This is a question of access; the UC has a moral responsibility to answer it with a solution.
We lobbied as graduate students who learn, research, work, and teach alongside the rest of the UC community but who are undervalued and exploited. Investments in graduate student success, including guaranteeing degree pathways and healthy relationships with advisors, are overdue.
We continued the fight to have UC administrators take sexual violence seriously. No space at the UC is without survivors. We owe them dignity through comprehensive services, fair adjudication and discipline for their assailants, and preventative training for everyone who finds themselves in a UC classroom.
We took our stories to the Regents, to Sacramento, and all the way to Washington DC. We are building political power for a demographic too often discounted. By standing together at the UC, we are making a powerful statement that young people are in fact engaged in the decisions that are being made for them. The onus is on those making these decisions to not close the door on us when we come to tell our stories.
My final challenge as UC Student Association President to UC administrators and our leaders in government is this: consider that in our lived experiences are lessons for how to best serve student needs. Remember your responsibility to care for us. We do not come to the UC intent just on getting a piece of paper showing a degree. We come heavy with the dreams of our families and with a inspired belief that what we learn will help us change the world for the better. We should be greeted with all the services we need to harness our hope and dedication, so that no matter what happens after we arrive, we are able to make it to graduation day.
I am so appreciative of everyone who had the courage to tell their stories this year, as well as those who keep their stories close to their heart but still turn out to make change for UC students. Most of the work that we do as student advocates is being there for each other. We listen, we encourage, we debate, and we carry what we hear with us into meetings with administrators or lobby visits with legislators. Through collective action, we actualize our power to raise our voice until it cannot be ignored. Students should be proud of how much we accomplished this year. There is always more work to be done, but we should not forget that we were successful this year in forcing solutions to problems that affect students’ daily lives.
To be a student at the University of California in 2016 means to come to some of the best public universities in the nation and challenge them to be better. For most of us engaged in student advocacy, that challenge is just as important as anything else we will do at the UC. We will leave the UC better than we found it.
Kevin Sabo just finished at UC Berkeley where he studied Peace and Conflict Studies and is the President of the University of California Student Association.
