Not every action you take needs to move mountains. Obviously, the big battles we come across at UC Berkeley and beyond are important to fight. Budget cuts should cease, tuition hikes should stop in their tracks and the administration should always be accountable to students. However, it has been apparent from my time at Cal and in the ASUC that people with clear and focused goals — even those related to free soda at Chipotle — have made the most change.

The UC Berkeley campus has witnessed an absolute tragedy this last week. The roots of our student government, our institutional traditions and even American history have been thrown to the wolves. Earlier Wednesday, I spoke with a freshman on the condition of anonymity due to his fear of repercussions. The student, almost in tears, lamented the fact that he was “really saddened that the ASUC did not take up the opportunity to represent me and effect true change.”

What has caused all of this campuswide sadness?

ASUC Senator Mihir Deo nobly attempted to pass a piece of legislation entitled “A Bill in Support of Free Soda from Chipotle.” This bill uses the power of the ASUC Senate as a representative body of more than 30,000 students to urge Chipotle to give back the deal that once gave free soda (and healthier options) to Cal students. Graduating seniors reminisce in those glory days when this dream was a reality, and they can only hope that deal will one day return.

Sadly, Deo met the hand of silencing resistance at the external affairs committee meeting this past week. The committee rejected the Chipotle bill in defense of the ASUC’s honor by purporting that the passage of the bill would make the ASUC look like a joke. Ironically, it is that committee that resembles the ultimate joke by rejecting the bill.

Our student body of more than 30,000 makes up the vast majority of customers who enter the beloved Chipotle on Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue. Something tells me that Chipotle would listen far more to our representative body than the regents would to that same political body. Why not support the wallets of students on the ground, and urge that business to bring back its magnanimous deal? Not only would Chipotle, at the very least, make an official response to this bill, but other businesses would also respond by giving students more deals to compete over who is most student-friendly.

Something that appears as a joke at face value can ultimately have a serious and widespread effect. You can often have the best shot at moving those mountains by working for the little things — not that free soda at Chipotle is a little feat.

Hey, you future ASUC of 2025 — never be scared to take yourselves lightly every once in a while — it can be what finally makes the student body take you seriously.

Noah Ickowitz is the SQUELCH! party chair and a former Daily Cal columnist.

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Cal students have an obligation to a storied history of change, progress and innovation. To sit idly by a broken system forgets our roots. To repeat the same formula and accept mediocrity denies our astonishing capabilities. To pretend that our ASUC is the best it could be punishes future generations of Cal students.

When attending a senate meeting, anyone watching can quickly understand why the ASUC is broken. Financial decisions are made based on which party “represents” each student group. Senators argue for increased fiscal responsibility when an opposing senator presents a bill for a student group, and those same senators magically change their principles by arguing that a money tree exists by the Campanile if someone from their own party requests funding for a group. This type of behavior not only pits parties against parties, but it irresponsibly drags student groups into a political game that uses their plays, their conferences and their workshops as pawns.  SQUELCH! senators have always whistle-blown from their one senate seat while calling for fair and consistent treatment of student groups, but they could help the campus much more if they had an increased presence in the senate and a presidential seat.

Even with just one senator in office, SQUELCH! championed campaign finance reform, and ASUC parties now have a spending limit of about $2,600. This prevents candidates from feeling pressured to contribute large sums to party spending and removes a degree of the disadvantages independent candidates face by having no party infrastructure to utilize.

Even with just one senator in office, hundreds of thousands of dollars in student fees will be saved by preventing an AC Transit contract void of negotiation from prematurely being implemented. This allowed negotiations to occur this year, which brought down the fee significantly.

Even with just one senator in office, we have chaired each of the three senate committees in the last three years, respectively.

This year, you are faced with a decision. Let the current system stay the same and believe this truly is the best we can do, or shake it up by waking up our beloved ASUC. To my knowledge, no CalSERVE or Student Action candidate favors budget cuts to education or tuition hikes, and yet the competition to hoard credit has resulted in a fragmented student voice at the expense of unity. If neither CalSERVE nor Student Action holds the majority in the senate, and if neither party holds the presidential seat, the two parties will be forced to work through their differences in a framework of unity and compromise at least for the causes that they do agree on. More importantly, with the pressure to compromise, the student groups represented by each party would learn to work with one another and create a better Cal.

Some may say that this is politics and that the system simply can’t change. To those critics, I would ask you to look at the students who started CalSERVE in 1984 and the students who started Student Action in 1995. Those students were innovators and realized that this system had to be transformed. Students responded by craving a refreshing change and voted in droves for these new parties. However, the parties slowly became what they critiqued. While SQUELCH! will face the same crucial problem of maintaining our mission as we expand our senate slate, we will do all we can to uphold our ideals and be pioneers from the beginning to the end.

 SQUELCH! promotes independence for its candidates in campaigning and in governing. We provide guidance and mentorship for our candidates’ campaigns, but we never force a candidate to conform to one ideal. We have candidates who flier, and we have some who would rather die than flier. We have candidates who ride whales in Sproul fountain, and we have candidates who choose to stay on land. This independence and creativity bleeds into the senate, where we provide education and institutional knowledge to our candidates but let them form their own opinions without pressure, because they did get into Cal, after all. We reach out to any student or student group with open arms, and our candidates carry with them a deep commitment to Cal. We select our candidates based on quality above all else. We know that you don’t have to be boring in order to be serious.

Diversify your ideal executive slate, educate yourself on the issues and choose whatever mix of candidates from what whatever mix of parties you find suits you.

Editor’s note: Noah Ickowitz is a former Daily Cal columnist.

Noah Ickowitz and Eric Raby are SQUELCH! party chairs.

Contact the opinion desk at opinion@dailycal.org.

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Those who signed and created the petition “respect the right to self-determination of the BSU and would never ask to dictate which speakers the group brings to campus.” In no way was the goal of the petition to force the BSU to change its mind. The autonomy of student groups rests at the core of diversity, and the petition never asks the BSU to alter its choices. If the BSU had decided that it would like to change speakers because of the impact that we pointed out in our petition, then that would be their choice to make. Farrakhan addressed those concerned with his presence on Saturday and said that he had a word for students who “arrogantly thought that they could frighten this generation.”

When addressing those concerned Berkeley students, Farrakhan asked, “are you still in the mold and the mind of a slave master that you think we should bow down to you and you tell us who you should listen to?” Although the petition explicitly respects the self-determination and First Amendment right of the BSU in bringing Farrakhan, this kind of rhetoric that compares other students to slave masters transcends controversial and is absolutely hateful and unconstructive. Continuing with his analogy, he expresses that such concern is the “mentality of the slave masters who owned us.”

Farrakhan continued to devote significant segments of his speech to the Jewish people. Claiming that Jews control the media, Farrakhan asserted that “they’re the publishers, they’re the writers, so if you want to be well spoken of then be a lackey” and said that since “you have a lot of influence on the government, you can bring the government against me too.” Mocking an Asian accent, Farrakhan asked the audience, “can you imagine Ching Lee Joong with a picket sign?” Louis Farrakhan’s fresh accusations and hateful rhetoric from this Saturday add to the past remarks that contribute to his infamous and vile character.

Most frightening was that during his speech, Farrakhan expressed his avid support for the book entitled “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews” and sold copies inside Wheeler Auditorium. The book proposes that Jews disproportionately contributed to the slave trade. New York Times writer Henry Gates labeled the book as “the bible of the new anti-Semitism” and said that “it suggests a doctrine of racial continuity” where Jews inherently bring down the black community. The Anti-Defamation League has stated that “it assaults the integrity of the Jewish religion, the meaning of Jewish history, and the foundations of Jewish scholarship upon which the book’s own fraudulent charges are based.”

Although already stated in the petition, I will insert a few especially offensive quotes that illuminate Louis Farrakhan’s past and ideology:

In reference to the LGBT community, Farrakhan declares, “God don’t like men coming to men with lust in their hearts like you should go to a female. If you think that the kingdom of God is going to be filled up with that kind of degenerate crap, you’re out of your damn mind.” Referring to Jewish people, Farrakhan proclaims, “The Jews don’t like Farrakhan, so they call me Hitler. Well, that’s a good name. Hitler was a very great man.” On Caucasians, he says, “White people are potential humans … they haven’t evolved yet.” Denouncing the revolution of the Libyan people, Farrakhan explains, “I know something of the good of Moammar Gadhafi that made me to love him as a brother.”

Louis Farrakhan’s speech lasted just two hours, but its messages outlast that isolated moment. UC students who purchased “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews” have now been taught a message of hate. When Farrakhan compared concerned students to slave masters, that message will also be perpetuated and inhibit the building of relationships. His past discriminatory statements about the LGBT community and countless other minority communities creeps onto this campus with his mere presence. It must be noted that Farrakhan did promote empowerment during his speech in Wheeler Auditorium, but it was a breed of empowerment rooted in hatred.

Still, even with Farrakhan’s discriminatory words Saturday morning, the BSU had every right to bring Farrakhan to this campus. Autonomy is crucial for student organizations, and it is up to each student group to decide how much the pain of other communities matters in its decision-making.

Noah Ickowitz is an ASUC senator.

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Yet despite these well-meaning intentions, an upcoming referendum to renew the AC Transit class pass (the system which allows students to use their Cal 1 Card on the bus for unlimited rides) is potentially threatening to institute student fees worth millions of dollars per year without accurate data on ridership. The contract contains no option to waive the fee, spans a long period of time and could potentially be worth less than we pay — all possible concessions on our end.

At the last senate meeting I was awestruck by the number of senators who supported the unstudied referendum, which requests more than $35 million over seven years in student fees. To be clear, I am not against the bus pass, but I cannot morally support such a monumental measure without necessary preparation. Although students should inevitably make this decision about their fees, a referendum that doesn’t provide information on how much students actually use the pass neglects the conscientiousness of Berkeley students who would be affected by the average use of their peers. Current juniors and seniors would vote only for future students. Voting in your own self-interest does not cut it when you’re not voting for yourself.

The fee increase would range from $77 to $86 over the seven years, and the specific amount allotted to AC transit would be between $37 and $41. One-third of the fee goes to financial aid, as is required for all fee increases, while a small percentage goes to fund alternate technology and the parking and transportation shuttles on campus. Without attaining any sort of deal — but to simply break even — the average student in 2014 would have to ride the bus about 18 times per semester with the flat admission rate at $2.10. Since we would be obligating such a large volume of students and such a long commitment to AC transit, we should be using the bus on average far more than the 18 times per semester that would solely break us even.

Regardless of whether our students do use the AC transit buses at that rate, we need to know that with certainty before putting this to a referendum. Paying an independent consulting firm to perform a statistically significant survey would be a necessary but small cost in light of such a massive and long-term contract. A schoolwide survey via email would not be sufficient for such a large sum of money. Although we do pay less for our bus pass than Alameda riders do for their monthly passes, the pass only benefits us if we know how much we actually use it.

The ASUC’s only data on the true value of this contract with AC Transit is from AC Transit. The fact that they have used the exact same number since 2006, combined with the fact that they are one of the negotiating parties in this contract, makes their estimate of 3.5 million rides per year shaky at best.

With the bus pass still maintained for next year, we have over a year to gather the information and have a referendum — once the picture is complete. It’s difficult to believe that AC Transit would halt its business with such a large customer because of not agreeing quickly enough. 2006 was the last year the AC Transit referendum took place, making this a year ahead of schedule.

Certain services on campus exist that are not used by all students but are subsidized by all. In no way do I oppose this concept, and the subsidizing of frequent riders by infrequent riders is understandable. My issue is not with this aspect. But students should know and not just guess the scope that they are subsidizing other students before approving of such a measure. Great services like the meditation space in MLK would not exist without the subsidizing of frequent users by infrequent users, but that room was converted with hard work and documentation of its predicted use. AC Transit has probably done their research for their interests. We must do the same.

If the data shows that people do in fact use the bus far above the 18 times per semester needed to break even, then I, of course, am in support of it. However, if the data shows that our ridership is far lower than we expected, then renewed negotiations must take place with AC Transit. The fear that fees by referendum in next year’s ballot would inhibit this fee from passing neglects the accountability associated with the ASUC and student fees as a whole. When our students face increasing financial burdens, each fee must be examined equally, and it is our responsibility not to place an incomplete referendum on this ballot.

Noah Ickowitz is an ASUC senator with the SQUELCH! Party.

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