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The ASUC Senate unanimously passed a bill last Wednesday in opposition to the Food and Drug Administration’s lifetime ban on blood donations from gay men.

The bill, SB 14, garnered full support from senators. Additionally, 16 out of the senate’s 20 members co-sponsored the bill.

Government officials on the national level, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and a number of openly gay and lesbian members of Congress, have also denounced the ban, calling it discriminatory and outdated.

Authored by CalSERVE Senator Caitlin Quinn, the bill calls on ASUC President Deejay Pepito to write a letter to President Barack Obama as well as to Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Barbara Lee expressing the ASUC’s concerns about the FDA’s lifetime ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men.

“After talking to some community members, I figured as the queer-endorsed Senator I should take a stand against this institutionalized form of homophobia,” Quinn said in an email.

The FDA ban was established in 1983 due to growing concerns surrounding the HIV/AIDS epidemic that swept the nation and particularly affected the American gay community. The ban remains in place despite 30 years of technological and medical advancement that allows HIV testing, said UC Berkeley senior Michelle Carney, who co-sponsored the bill.

According to a study by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, lifting the ban would allow more than 2.6 million eligible men to make blood donations, providing 219,200 pints of donated blood.

Carney said 24 percent of blood donations for the American Red Cross in the Bay Area comes from high school and college students, making this issue particularly important for members of the UC Berkeley community.

“From organizing the blood drive ourselves (on campus), we as students were tired of seeing our community feel helpless and hopeless,” Carney said.

According to the FDA website, the ban on such donations is “not based on any judgment concerning the donor’s sexual orientation.”

In a statement released in June, however, the AABB (formerly known as the American Association of Blood Banks), America’s Blood Centers and the Red Cross said they believed that the FDA’s ban “should be modified and donor referral criteria should be made comparable with criteria for other behaviors that pose an increased risk for transmission of transfusion-transmitted infections.”

“I definitely think it’s a really good start,” said UC Berkeley freshman Anthony Barros, who works in Quinn’s office and was involved in writing the bill. “Bringing visibility and awareness of this issue to Cal will be the best first steps to make change on this issue.”

Jennie Yoon is the lead student government reporter. Contact her at jyoon@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @jennieyoon_.

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The increase in interest rates from 3.4 to 6.8 percent will affect about 40 percent of UC Berkeley students who take out loans each year. In recent weeks, Democrats and Republicans in both houses of Congress have tried to pass proposals that would extend the subsidies or reform the federal student loans system, but disagreements over the government deficit and proposed reforms prevented a deal.

A proposal by Sen. Elizabeth Warren would fix the rate of subsidized loans to the rate given to major banks by the Federal Reserve at 0.75 percent. Another plan by House Republicans would tie student loan rates to the 10-year U.S. Treasury note, subject to market fluctuations but capped at 8.5 percent.

Rep. John Garamendi, D-Fairfield, a member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce is outraged by the failure of Congress to pass effective legislation and attributes much of the inaction to the broader fight in the capitol over the deficit.

“You’ve got a large amount of money, a large number of loans to subsidize the interest rate and a great deal of conflict whether it ought to be done at all,” Garamendi said. “The question arises as to where the money should come from, so you’ve got the deficit issue.”

Rachelle Feldman, director of the UC Berkeley Financial Aid and Scholarship Office, said that some of the proposals put forth may have been more detrimental to students in the long run than the current expiration of the subsidy.

“We want student interest rates low in any permanent solution to the current problem,” Feldman said. “What we don’t want to see is for them to keep the interest rate on subsidized loans low at the expense of any other student-aid program.”

Currently, students who take out loans at UC Berkeley have an average of about $17,000 in debt upon graduation, compared to about $28,000 nationally. Because the subsidized loans have now doubled, Feldman estimates that the average borrower at UC Berkeley would see a difference in his or her monthly payment of about $15 a month over a 10-year repayment period, which amounts to about an extra $1,800 over 10 years.

The expiration of the Stafford subsidized loans will not affect the Stafford unsubsidized loans or the Stafford PLUS loans that graduate students and the families of students can take out that are offered by the financial aid department.

Brian McFadden, a junior at UC Berkeley, plans on taking out all Stafford loans offered to him for the coming year and until he graduates despite the rate increase. When asked about the increase in the interest rate, McFadden was quick to admit the difficulty of grasping the long-term consequences of the interest rate raise.

“People like me can’t think about it, since we have no experience of what it’s like after college being hit with all these debts,” McFadden said. “It’s just a number, an abstraction.”

But McFadden said he is cynical about the politics that surround the increase.

“The sad thing is that I am not surprised — this is business as usual for the country.”

Contact Chase Schweitzer at cschweitzer@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @ChaseSchweitz.

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The 2012 election season saw another source of speculation and analysis added to the universe of political talk shows Monday with the premiere of “The War Room with Jennifer Granholm.”

Former governor of Michigan and UC Berkeley lecturer Jennifer Granholm will appear weeknights at 9 p.m. after Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Current TV. The show entails political analysis fused with pre-prepared segments that highlight different aspects of the upcoming presidential election.

Gov. Jerry Brown will appear on the program Wednesday, according to a press release from the governor’s office Tuesday.

In the first half of  Monday’s show, New York Times analyst Nate Silver predicted a likely victory for Mitt Romney in the Florida GOP primary elections.

Then, in a prerecorded interview during the latter half of the program, Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren discussed campaign finance and urged members of Congress to relinquish any stock they may own before taking office.

Granholm also spent some time chatting with Newt Gingrich’s Florida campaign co-chair Bill McCollum, who reiterated that the candidate has no plans of quitting the race.

Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs also made an appearance, and Granholm took the audience on a prerecorded tour of President Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters in Chicago.

Unlike similar news shows that air once a week, “The War Room” airs five times a week, presenting a much greater challenge to incorporate new material.

Despite the time requirement the show presents, Granholm will continue to teach at the UC Berkeley School of Law and the Goldman School of Public Policy.

The show could help Granholm to better her teaching in the classroom, according to Steven Weissman, associate director for the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment at the law school.

Weissman, who is teaching a class on renewable energy and clean technology policy with Granholm, said “the class is very much about energy policy in the current political context. The show helps because she is able to engage with prominent political actors each day.”

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