Berkeley is one of the most distinguished, progressive and diverse communities in the world. This is a legacy of which we residents are very proud: Not only is our city home to what is arguably the best public university in the world, we have a defining history of diversity, activism and progressivism that you don’t find anywhere else. Not every town of 100,000 people shows up in the history books.
But our work is never done. We Berkeleyans do a great job protecting the underrepresented in our society, but there is one community of interest within our city borders that remains underrepresented: students!
Students Are a Community of Interest in Berkeley
Students are a unique case because they have not traditionally been considered a “community of interest.” This isn’t surprising, though, considering that students comprise such a large fraction of the population in only a handful of towns throughout the country that are home to large universities.
However, there’s no reason to think of students in Berkeley as anything other than such a community of interest. As Paul Gackle said in the East Bay Express on July 20, “Getting around Berkeley without encountering signs of student life is nearly impossible. Students study around the clock in cafes like Au Coquelet and Strada, eat Cheese Board pizza on the Shattuck Avenue median and party into the wee hours of the night on college football game days.
In many ways, student culture is deeply embedded within the city’s social fabric. Even Berkeley’s global reputation for being a beacon of liberal activism is rooted in the student protest movements of the Sixties.
The truth is that, despite students’ contribution to our cultural and economic vitality, there has only ever been one student elected to City Council in all of Berkeley’s history. Since the districts were created in 1986, not a single student has been elected to the Council.
That’s because the student community is split up — disenfranchised — over half of those districts: downtown housing is in District 4, north-side housing is in District 6, the Units and Co-ops are in District 7 and the fraternities, sororities and Foothill, Bowles and Stern are in District 8.
We Can All Benefit from Including Students
While the fact that this system is unfair is important, there is an even more relevant issue at stake: without a student perspective in local affairs, Berkeley is not the best community that we could be.
UC Berkeley students are some of the best and brightest in the world. Likewise, we are home to Berkeley City College, one of the best community colleges in the state, which has a higher graduation and transfer rate than most other institutions. If we as a community harness the intellectual energy, power and optimism that our student community represents, we can reach our full potential as a model progressive city.
Why waste the talent that we have right here, especially when the student community is asking for a seat at the table? Would we consider wasting environmental resources like solar power or tidal energy because it’s never been done before? Would we consider wasting our cultural resources by not protecting the diversity of our city because it’s difficult? In the same vein, why should we waste the human capital of some of the brightest minds in the world?
We would all benefit if we took the same attitude toward our intellectual capital as we do toward our environmental and cultural capital.
It is a matter of Berkeley pride that we give all communities a seat at the proverbial table, including the student community.
One of the best ways to do that is through drawing City Council lines in a way that protects the student community of interest. We are fortunate enough to have that opportunity now: every 10 years, our legislative lines are redrawn to ensure fairness, equality and representation for all communities.
Respecting Communities of Interest Is Democratic
But this raises another question: Why are some students of this very university with such an inspiring history arguing for their own disenfranchisement?
On July 25, an opinion piece appeared in the Daily Cal that argued that “creating a district for a specific political purpose does not broaden representation … Gerrymandering a student super-majority with the aim of always having a student on the city council circumvents democracy.”
Did they sleep through History 7B? Have they not been reading the news? I can’t think of any statement regarding redistricting that could be more wrong.
Historians have long recognized that the best way to ensure democracy and fair representation for a minority community is to group them together within political boundaries. It’s the reason why the Voting Rights Act was passed! The VRA states that communities of interest must have equal access to the political process and the “opportunity … to elect representatives of their choice.”
These words are the reason the Voting Rights Act has been interpreted as an imperative to draw boundaries that keep communities together. It’s why leaders are concerned about districts that split up the black community, and the reason why the Citizens’ Redistricting Commission purposely drew extra versions of their maps in order to maximize the number of “Latino districts” in the Los Angeles area. It’s also the reason why leaders of the gay community in San Francisco objected to the proposed Assembly districts that would split up gay-friendly neighborhoods.
The idea that “drawing a student district is undemocratic” is completely and utterly wrong. In fact, drawing a student district is one of the smartest decisions we could make and will bebeneficial to everyone in Berkeley, student and non-student alike. Creating a student district is a critical step for us — a matter of community pride — to continue our leadership along the historical arc toward equality.
This piece was submitted on behalf of:
Chris Alabastro, Class of 2012, Executive Vice President, ASUC
Daniel Osborn, Class of 2011, former President, Cal Berkeley Democrats
Ian Magruder, Class of 2012, former President, California College Democrats
Jeremy Pilaar, Class of 2012, Legislative Liaison, ASUC
Joey Freeman, Class of 2013, External Affairs Vice President, ASUC
Julia Joung, Class of 2013, Academic Affairs Vice President, ASUC
Keith Yetter, Class of 2009, former Political Director, Cal Berkeley Democrats
Kristin Hunziker, Class of 2009, former Coordinator, Students for Barack Obama
Nik Dixit, Class of 2011, former Political Director, California College Democrats
Shahryar Abbasi, Class of 2013, Senator, ASUC
Vishalli Loomba, Class of 2012, President, ASUC
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[In many ways, student culture is deeply embedded within the city’s
social fabric. Even Berkeley’s global reputation for being a beacon of
liberal activism is rooted in the student protest movements of the
Sixties.
The problem with that “culture” is that it emphasizes what is politically in fashion by people who will (or should) be gone in a couple of years, at the expense of long-term residents of the community who will eventually have to pay the price (both economically and socially) for such decisions. I am HARDLY in agreement with the vast majority of Berkeley residents on a number of issues, but at the same time, I recognize that their right to representation is being diluted by a bunch of short-timers who really aren’t involved in the community, and will never have to deal with the consequences of their own short-sighted agenda.
It should also be noted that you don’t want student representation, you want liberal activist student representation. I very much doubt that you would even consider it a plus were a member of Berkeley College Republicans to serve on the city council.
The whole point of the article is that students make up a minority
community - it’s not gerrymandering if you’re protecting a minority
community, it’s justice! Students shouldn’t be disenfranchised the way
they now.
No, it’s still gerrymandering.
Wow, I actually agree with you on something…
This sounds like a great idea. The students can have elect someone to be their voice in City government… someone that is accountable to them. Students have issues that are specific to our experiences in Berkeley and having a student on the Council to make sure those issues are heard is critical to equality representation. The City Council has nine members (including the Mayor) so having one member be a student wouldn’t mean that the students could take over the agenda. Plus who’s to say that the students would elect a student… they may elect a young resident (or any resident for that matter) that is accountable to them and aware of their issues. I like the idea.
As a graduate student at UC, it is very clear to me that students in Berkeley are “temporary residents”. They largely ignore local politics, they have little stake in longterm city policies since they know they will be leaving, and many do not even indirectly pay property taxes (ie, dorm residents). If students are able to mobilize to elect a representative through the current system then go for it, but I see little benefit to gerrymandering the districts to guarantee a student on the council.
Furthermore, city council members serve four year terms. If undergraduates are elected to the city council, there is a high likelihood that they will resign in the middle of their term when they graduate and move away, which will make the whole thing a farce.
In what way are students not represented in Berkeley? Assuming they’re citizens, they have the franchise, and a student’s vote counts just like a permanent resident’s.
This editorial is arguing that the districts be gerrymandered in order to ensure that students can elect a pet councilman to the City Council. That’s not representation–that’s manipulating the political process to try and get a different result out of it.
The funny thing is that if students were to give more of a damn about city politics they could indeed be a voting force to reckon with. Most of them, however, seem to have other priorities. Why should the rest of Berkeley’s voters make it easy for them to do end runs around the process?
There are quite a few things wrong with these arguments. It may seem pedantic, but it is necessary to point out that this comment stretches the notion of gerrymandering. The broadest definition of gerrymandering, as offered by Merriam Webster is: to divide (an area) into political units to give special advantages to one group. Given that students comprise about one-quarter of Berkeley’s population and that they are concentrated enough to very easily form a district that is greater than 90% student-aged, it seems more a matter of course than a special advantage that they would have at least one district where they constituted a hyper-majority. If anything, the students currently experience a special disadvantage by having their core areas split across districts.
Arguing that just because someone has a vote means they are fairly represented is an argument which history shows to be patently false. Due to true gerrymandering carried out by Republicans in the Texas state legislature, the city of Austin is now split across multiple, sprawling, awkward districts. I doubt the commenter would regard this as fair or appropriate, yet it’s very similar to what students experience in Berkeley. A similar example would be pre-VRA tactics that were used to prevent minority-majority neighborhoods from having the power to elect candidates who would represent them. Granted, student-status and ethnicity are hardly comparable, but similar community-of-interest principles nonetheless apply.
Finally, arguing that groups with a recent history of lower turnout are somehow less deserving of fair representation smacks of anti-democratic elitism. The poor and/or less educated tend to have lower turnout than those who are highly-educated or wealthy–does this mean the former are less deserving of fair representation? Hardly.
The bottom line is that in a city where students are 25% of the population, it seems unfair that opportunities for a student voice are so diminished by our current electoral configuration. I’m agnostic on the question of whether a current student would be the best choice to serve on council–be they Cal, BCC, undergraduate, graduate, or otherwise. I think any person, young or old, inclined to truly take student interests to heart would be a welcome new voice. I’m not sure what opponents are so afraid of when it comes to a student district, or even a more heavily-student District 7. Once upon a time Berkeley fought for bold and dynamic ideas; it seems nowadays that the only thing some people will fight for is the status quo.
Identity politics is dumb enough when applied to ethnicity or sexuality. It’s even dumber when applied to a temporary category like a person’s status as a student.
It’s time to call a halt to this technocratic nonsense now. Identity politics (and its retarded half-sister, essentialism) has fragmented this country practically beyond repair as it is.
Your point is well taken, Seer. Personally, I’d be fine with completely dismantling the district system and having the entire council elected at-large. I think that on a small scale like the City of Berkeley, a district system can indeed have the deleterious effect of dissuading politicians from thinking about the good of the city as a whole. Similarly, I’d be fine with having the US convert to proportional representation.
Nevertheless, in the context of a district system–a system inherently designed to reflect local communities of interest–it is unfair that the student community is arbitrarily split across so many districts. This is arguably less than ideal for their non-student neighbors as well.
I’m in full agreement–with your first paragraph, anyway. :)
[Your point is well taken, Seer. Personally, I'd be fine with completely
dismantling the district system and having the entire council elected
at-large. I think that on a small scale like the City of Berkeley, a
district system can indeed have the deleterious effect of dissuading
politicians from thinking about the good of the city as a whole]
That certainly seems to be the issue on the other side of the bay in SF…
Berkeley residents don’t want students to have political power. Students will pass laws requiring taxation to support quixotic agendas, then graduate and leave town, paying none of the cost themselves.