Public money against the public will

ASUC funds racially biased student groups

By Mickey Klein
From the September 2005 Print Edition

Every year, in time-honored university tradition, student groups come before the Associated Students of the University of California in a neat line to plead for gruel from the ASUC senators. Next to pontificating on world affairs, divvying out money to competing campus interests is the ASUC’s only real external business. And it’s a nasty one. The budget is a constant zero-sum game where one group’s gain is another’s loss. Every dollar given is one denied, one group supported and another suppressed. At every stage, the mission of the ASUC — to represent the student body and dispense money accordingly — is balanced with the rough-and-tumble current of party politics and special interests that plague every moment of governance.

Within the maelstrom of the budget is a 17.15-percent portion for student-initiated service groups: campus organizations started by students, or nationwide groups with student-initiated chapters, dedicated to public service. Reading down the list, there are a slew of worthy causes with funding requests, from Colleges Against Cancer to Habitat for Humanity. These groups, however, are not the priority of the budget section. Instead, the ASUC has used this portion to fund its racial special-interest programs like the Black, Raza, Native American, and Asian/Pacific Islander Retention and Recruitment Centers and the Pilipinio Academic Student Services. The centers receive a staggering 42 percent, or about $108,000, of the public-service budget.

The recruitment centers are the ASUC’s method of bypassing the will of the people of California, who passed Proposition 209, banning preferential treatment based on race. Through these groups, services are created specifically to target and retain students of specific races and ethnicities. Keep in mind that none of these groups are dedicated to recruiting and retaining poor and disadvantaged students who need help navigating through the decidedly upper-middle class world of the university. Rather, they use public funds to help their preferred racial groups over others in the college process, a direct violation of Prop. 209, which reads, “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”

Not only that, the ASUC’s own constitution expressly forbids the ASUC Senate from funding any group that practices racial discrimination in its method of recruitment or acceptance for membership, such as groups that work to recruit and retain blacks, Latinos, Filipinos, et cetera, as their respective names indicate. Regardless of the law, the ASUC presses on and uses the funds given to it by the state in a manner expressly forbidden by the state and its own rules.

The sacrifice of true service organizations is felt hardest when put into the context of budget request and allocation. M.E.Ch.A. de UC Berkeley received 66 percent ($3,965) of its request. The Raza Recruitment and Retention Center received 75 percent ($37,543) of its funding request, and the Black Recruitment and Retention Center received 52 percent ($37,802). The two organizations that didn’t get majorities of their requests (almost unheard of in the rest of the budget) were the Native American and Asian Pacific counterparts at 41 percent and 39 percent, respectively.

The mainstream public-service organizations did not fair so well in the public-service budget. Colleges Against Cancer, an association dedicated to spreading awareness and education about fighting cancer, received 1 percent ($210) of its request. 4-D Stars Academic Sports Academy, a program that pulls inner city youths off the streets and provides them with academic enrichment and sports to build character and provide lifestyle alternatives, received 18 percent ($1,500) of its budget request. Habitat for Humanity, which builds homes for the poor with volunteer labor, received 21 percent ($985) of its request.

Behind the damning numbers and budget crunches lies a deeper problem of campus governance that demands reform. First and foremost, the ASUC must come into compliance with the laws of the people in its dispensation of public funds and cease funding racial special interests. Secondly, the ASUC Senate must re-examine its priorities in serving the greater good. It is well and good if the student body wants to establish programs that help students from impoverished backgrounds navigate the university environment, but it is entirely different to apportion money to organizations dedicated to recruiting and retaining students of a particular skin color or national origin. Finally, the ASUC Senate, after consolidation of these funds, should refocus its funding practices toward organizations on campus that serve human — rather than political — interests.

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