By Khadeejah Khan and Phoebe Huss | CalMatters
Of the 26 UC Regents, one pupil place has voting energy. A second pupil seat is a non-voting “designate.” To extend pupil illustration, UC pupil leaders are pushing for the second seat to even have voting energy.
The College of California serves 300,000 college students, but solely one of many two college students on the 26-member Board of Regents is allowed to vote. Now, pupil leaders are campaigning for a second vote, saying it will higher be sure that UC coverage displays all college students.
Regents are the highest decision-makers of the UC system, and set insurance policies for all campuses, together with tuition will increase. When one pupil has to signify the desires of the whole pupil inhabitants, some really feel different views miss out. Final 12 months, when one pupil regent voted in favor of elevating nonresident tuition, the opposite pupil regent disagreed, however couldn’t vote on it.
At present, the non-voting pupil spends the primary 12 months on the board as a “regent-designate.” That pupil then strikes into the voting place the next 12 months. The scholars are chosen from an applicant pool of all UC graduate and undergraduate college students and authorised by the board.
By including a second vote for pupil regents, UC would comply with within the footsteps of the opposite two public greater schooling methods within the state. Laws handed earlier this decade enabled voting energy for 2 pupil representatives on the California State College and California Group Faculty governing boards.
UC board coverage, in contrast, can’t be modified by means of a legislative invoice, however could possibly be modified by measures voted on by the regents, or by a constitutional modification authorised by each the Legislature and California voters. Not like Cal State and neighborhood schools, the UC was established by the state structure as a system that governs itself with very restricted legislative oversight. An legal professional normal as soon as likened the Board of Regents to a department of state authorities, equal to the legislative, judiciary and government.
In the event that they select to go for the modification, pupil advocates wish to see it handed by the tip of subsequent 12 months’s legislative session so the measure can seem on the November 2026 midterm elections poll.
Pupil advocates take the lead
Present pupil regent Sonya Brooks, a doctoral pupil in schooling coverage at UCLA, started her voting tenure in July, when she voted in a committee assembly in opposition to permitting the UC president to boost skilled diploma tuition. The committee voted to advocate the president be given this authority, with six in favor and three in opposition to. The complete board then voted to affirm the authority.
“I’ve at all times been an advocate for all issues justice,” Brooks mentioned. “Now, due to this place and the alternatives which can be obtainable, I’ve actually taken benefit to essentially assist not solely college students… but additionally college and workers.”
Miguel Craven, an vitality methods graduate pupil at UC Davis, is shadowing Brooks this 12 months because the non-voting pupil regent. He was UC Merced’s pupil authorities senator and president throughout undergrad, whereas additionally serving as a pupil observer to the regents.
He hopes to behave as a bridge between college students and regents, in a system that may structurally really feel laborious for college students to take part in.
“It’s not a lot that the establishment consults the scholars,” Craven mentioned. “The truth is, it’s the opposite manner: the scholars must seek the advice of the establishment… It’s as much as the scholars to make that effort.”
Yearly, the UC Pupil Affiliation, a coalition of UC college students and pupil governments, conducts a civic engagement marketing campaign known as UCweVOTE to show college students about electoral processes and encourage them to vote. This 12 months, to spice up pupil energy on the Board of Regents, they’re taking the lead in advocating for voting rights for the second pupil regent.
Aditi Hariharan, the affiliation’s president and a fifth-year diet and political science double main at UC Davis, desires to see a broader vary of pupil voices and backgrounds represented that can not be captured in only one vote.
“The necessity for this marketing campaign is the truth that college students aren’t a monolith,” mentioned Hariharan. “Not each pupil views points the identical.”
Advocates imagine a second voting pupil may give weight to the scholar voice on greater than one of many regents’ 10 committees. Regent committees usually meet concurrently, that means the voting pupil regent can solely forged votes at certainly one of them.
Committee deliberations usually have large impacts on regent choices, says former pupil regent Alexis Zaragoza. Non-voting pupil regents can attend committee conferences and contribute to discussions, however Zaragoza famous even this capacity will not be protected in coverage. She needs it was.
“In case you have two pupil votes… perhaps the opposite pupil votes a distinct manner, proper?” Zaragoza mentioned. “And it form of simply reveals, perhaps college students are literally form of cut up on this challenge, perhaps your completely different backgrounds contribute in several methods. It not places that stress on one pupil to signify a complete populace.”
One challenge on which college students and pupil regents typically disagree is tuition. On the November 2024 regent assembly, the board, together with Josiah Beharry, the scholar regent on the time, voted to extend nonresident tuition.
On the assembly, a number of college students raised considerations concerning the tuition enhance, together with Craven as a pupil observer, who mentioned the rise would restrict accessibility on the UC by making the college much less reasonably priced for out-of-state and worldwide college students.
The 2 college students have been “not in settlement” on this challenge, Brooks recalled. After the vote, Beharry requested Brooks how she would have voted in his sneakers. She instructed him she would have voted in opposition to the rise. Beharry has not responded to a number of requests for remark.
A visit by means of the Legislature
In 2021, former Sen. Steve Glazer, a Democrat from Orinda within the East Bay, launched Senate Constitutional Modification 5, which might have required the creation of a second voting pupil regent. The Meeting Appropriations Committee decided that the modification’s prices to the UC could be “minor and absorbable.”
Nonetheless, Glazer instructed CalMatters that the committee determined the modification wouldn’t progress, with out specifying a motive.
In 1974, a constitutional modification authorised by California voters gave the board permission to have a pupil regent. The regents added the place in 1975. Then, in 1993, the regents created the regent-designate place by voting on a coverage, and not using a constitutional modification.
In line with an meeting committee evaluation of Glazer’s modification, a constitutional modification will not be required so as to add a second pupil voter. This time round, the scholar affiliation is contemplating merely proposing a coverage change for the board to vote on slightly than a constitutional modification.
If the scholar affiliation decides to go the modification route, they would wish a legislator to sponsor the invoice, which would wish the approval of a number of committees, a two-thirds vote in each the Meeting and Senate, and a easy majority of votes in a statewide election.
As with Glazer’s modification, college students say the change in voting energy is not going to immediately result in further prices for the college, as a result of each pupil regents already attend all conferences on the UC’s dime. It could be a easy transition from a non-voting to a voting position.
Some college students do nonetheless see worth in having a non-voting pupil regent construct understanding in the course of the first 12 months earlier than receiving voting energy. Brooks is an lively participant at bi-monthly regent conferences, asking questions, chatting with college students, and fascinating in debates with different regents. However when she joined the board, “I didn’t know A to Z,” she mentioned. “If I didn’t have that one 12 months to develop, to satisfy folks, to type these natural relationships… I might have fully been misplaced.”
All regents, together with pupil regents, full the identical orientation. These coaching periods train them board insurance policies and logistics, and embrace briefings with board leaders. So when pupil regents be a part of the board, they know what they’re entering into, Zaragoza mentioned.
Not one of the 18 regents appointed by the governor responded to CalMatters’ requests for touch upon this story. The opposite seven members are “ex officio,” having regental energy by advantage of one other workplace they maintain, such because the governor and Meeting speaker. These members don’t at all times attend regent conferences.
Craven thinks {that a} second pupil voter isn’t the only real resolution to the shortage of pupil illustration. He’s excited by methods to develop pupil advocacy on the regents past the positions that exist.
“What does pupil illustration imply?” Craven mentioned. “Does that imply any individual who’s really voting, who sits on the board? Will we wish to present a further area for college students to have the ability to converse?… It’s a dialogue that has to occur.”
On Nov. 19, the regents will vote whether or not to re-affirm annual tuition will increase for incoming teams of scholars, which was first applied in 2021. Brooks mentioned few college students have shared considerations together with her over the will increase, however she plans to hunt them out and speak to them.
“I’ll proceed to succeed in out to college students and vote accordingly,” Brooks mentioned.
