Pro vs. Con
Deciding on the Student Union Referendum

PRO -The Lower Sproul Fee is a Chance To Bring a Much-Deserved Student Center to the UC Berkeley Campus

The Student Union Complex Referendum on this year’s ballot provides us—both graduate and undergraduate students—with a unique opportunity to solidify our voice in redefining the Student Union Complex surrounding the Lower Sproul Plaza and affirm student leadership on issues of student life.

Student input is a huge part of the process. So far through student surveys and student focus groups, we have demanded numerous improvements and enhanced services.

Just imagine having the career center on Lower Sproul.

Or a new and more dynamic multicultural center.

Or a graduate student center.

Or indoor dance and performance space (rather than the hard concrete of the Lower Sproul Plaza).

There could also be more social spaces, such as lounges and a café or more space for students groups and GSI offices. The plaza could actually be turned into an attractive place to meet people and congregate. Better yet, what about new and improved commercial enterprises such as restaurants and other stores? The possibilities are endless. This referendum gives us, the students, the opportunity and influence to make these possibilities a reality.

The administration has stepped up to the plate as well. The chair of the redevelopment oversight committee has requested $4.1 million of administration funds over four years! In combination with the funds provided by this referendum, this should be enough money to finish with the redevelopment’s planning and design, the step just before construction.

In addition, the chancellor has said that the redevelopment will be on the list of campus fundraising priorities. As a result, we are able to seek funds from big donors for construction of the redevelopment, thus lowering future construction costs. In combination with the administration’s financial contribution, this referendum also provides for fundraising staff.

Perhaps the most important aspect of this referendum, however, is that it gives us, the students, true power over the process and composition of the redevelopment. This referendum gives students the power to discontinue the fee if the redevelopment “process has either not been inclusive of the needs of the student body or they perceive the campus administration has ceased active participation in the redevelopment.” This gives us additional power and protection just in case things do not go as planned, which is particularly important given the turnover rate of students.

In the world of the administration, money talks; more appropriately, those who pay get to talk. Since students will pay the money, we will get to talk. This holds true regardless of who is in the administration or what the administration’s priorities are. If they walk, we walk. In fact, if the planning is not favorable to our priorities—i.e., student priorities—we can walk first.

One final reason to vote for the Student Union Complex Referendum is the per dollar value that we get. Everyone pays a mandatory fee of $58.50 per semester for free access to the Class Pass. Similarly, everyone pays a mandatory fee of $44.50 per semester for improved services at the Tang Center.

This fee is only $9 per semester: That’s less than $2.25 a month or less than $0.08 per day. Yet that tiny amount gives students influence in redeveloping our student union complex. It really is a very good deal. Plus, a third of the money gets returned to financial aid to help those of us who need it.

If you have visited UC San Diego, UC Davis, UCLA, or the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Virginia, then you have seen the fabulous student centers that complement those public universities. At UC Berkeley, we need the kind of student union complex that complements the nation’s best public university and supports the kinds of activities and programs we want.

We deserve a new student union complex. We have the right to help define it. To do so, please vote yes on the Student Union Complex Fee Referendum.

by Joshua Daniels and Oren Gabriel

Joshua Daniels is the Graduate Assembly president. Oren Gabriel is the ASUC president. Send comments to

opinion@dailycal.org.

Con - ‘Convoluted’ Referendum Forces Students to Fund a Project That The University Should Be Financing

The Student Union Complex Fee, or the Lower Sproul Fee, is a convoluted referendum, and the ballot question hides the most important detail about it: We’re upping fees for nothing.

Fundamentally, the issue is who will pay for the redevelopment of Lower Sproul, and who will have a say. Redeveloping Lower Sproul is the university’s job, and the university should pay for it. But it has refused to do so for years. The proponents of the referendum, at the request of the university administration, have argued that we need to put money forward to get a place at the table when it comes to decision-making, and make the university take a strong financial role.

This was fine as an abstract idea at the beginning of the year, but now it no longer makes sense.

This is because the effort has failed. The proponents won’t tell you, but they have completely failed to accomplish their goal. They were unable to get any kind of real, concrete commitment from the university in exchange for this fee. The fee is now contingent on a vague concept of “university cooperation,” because the university wouldn’t make any kind of agreement with the ASUC about what will happen when this fee passes.

The punch line is this: We are raising our fees and getting nothing in return.

At this point, our student representatives should have dropped the fee. Now that it won’t work, as it won’t get us what we want from the university, the appropriate thing to do would be to tell the university that it will not get a fee increase from us until it steps up to the plate.

But inexplicably, they did not do this. Instead, they pushed the fee in a misguided attempt to leave some kind of legacy, so that when future students do the job that these leaders failed to do, they can still claim some credit for it, even though they actually left the student body in worse shape than it was before.

We are throwing money at the university in the hopes that sometime in the future, it might feel like tossing us a bone. This is absurd. Our ASUC leaders failed to get any kind of commitment as a condition for passing this fee. Do we really think we’ll be able to get anything out of the university administration once we make our bargaining position even worse?

And it will be worse. Before the fee is passed, we are able to tell the university that they have to give us some kind of guarantee, or they won’t get the money. Binding conditions can be written into the referendum.

But this fee increase has no such requirements. Instead, the judgment about whether the university is cooperating enough will be left to a vote of the Senate and Graduate Assembly.

Once this fee passes, it can only be revoked if both the Senate and the Graduate Assembly agree that the university hasn’t been cooperating enough. This means that the university’s obligation after passing this fee will be to simply do the minimal amount necessary to prevent either body from making that declaration. And considering that our supposed leaders pushed this fee on the say-so of the university in the first place, and are still pushing it even though they can’t deliver on their original goal, we can’t expect much spine from them.

It’s an either-or issue for the university. It can easily try to please just one body, such as the unelected Graduate Assembly, many of whose members are appointed by the university itself through department offices.

If the university says “forget the undergraduates, we’ll just do a few things for the assembly,” then it will have done enough to keep the fee from being revoked.

To summarize, the fee increase gains us nothing, worsens our bargaining position, allows the university to use a divide-and-conquer strategy and makes university access that much less affordable.

It also sets a precedent that, when the university doesn’t want to carry out its responsibility, it can just push the costs onto us.

Take this rare opportunity in this upcoming election and tell the university that you expect more from it by voting against the Student Union Complex Fee.

by Justin Azadivar

Justin Azadivar is a UC Berkeley graduate student. Send comments to opinion@dailycal.org.

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